While much of the credit for the Maharam revival belongs to the fabrics themselves, a tightly orchestrated image plays a part as well. In 1998, Michael Maharam's wife, Weismuller, took over the graphics, designing everything from fax cover sheets to construction showroom signage. The look has the clear simplicity of classic Modern, with a Scandinavian brightness. The Manhattan offices near Gramercy Park were redesigned by Fernlund & Logan, architects of the offices of the avant-garde journal Visionaire. Sample books in satellite showrooms are presented in color-coded cubic wall units a la Donald Judd.
"Employees were told to put away the beanie babies," Michael Maharam said, "and there would be no more handwritten labels."
Everything would be graphically clean, "even pharmaceutical," he added. Commissions went out to designer darlings, like Hella Jongerius, the Dutch designer, and Bruce Mau, the Canadian graphic artist. In addition to the archival reintroductions that endowed instant seriousness of purpose, Maharam is also developing a stringently monitored environmental line.
In keeping with the dictate that "nice" won't suffice, the Maharam sales force now attends monthly lectures by design cognoscenti like Aaron Betsky, a former curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "I want the truck drivers in the warehouse to be able to talk about Gio Ponti," Michael Maharam said.
Competitors admire the way Maharam has inflated its image. "It's rare to find a company that has managed to inject the emotional and the inspirational into their project while still keeping an eye on efficiency and fulfillment," said Greg Parsons, the president of Herman Miller Red, a company that has collaborated with Maharam.
While figures are not available, the contract industry is beginning to slow down along with the rest of the economy. Maharam, Stephen Maharam says, is flush enough to undertake a complete overhaul of its Hauppauge, New York, warehouse.
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