We recently connected with Bridgett Cochran and Kelly Porter and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Bridgett Cochran and Kelly Porter thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
What do you think it takes to be successful?
As a creative entrepreneur you need to have a few key things in order to be successful – talent, resilience, fortitude, but even more important than all of these is persistence. I think so many great ideas never get the traction they need because they aren’t given the time necessary to grow. Porter Teleo was a slow build for sure, but that allowed us to make adjustments along the way that helped mold our business into the success that it is today. When we started, we of course thought we’d be an overnight sensation, but the process of slowly building a business over 20 years has been an incredible journey. – Bridgett Cochran
I think success is a very individually understood word with an extremely personal meaning. For me, there is a level of authenticity that I strive for that supersedes all of the excess, the overdone, the predictable and the unnecessary products out there. Whether its a piece of art, a product line, a collection of materials or something that is a one-off – if you are going to create it, build it and put it out there in the world let’s make sure it is useful, engaging, dynamic and innovative. Let’s solve problems and break new ground. There is no sense in generating more of the same. This is what success means to me. – Kelly Porter
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My background is in Interior Design. In 2005, I was working at an architecture firm specifying hand printed wall covering for clients and asked my friend, artist Kelly Porter, how exactly hand printed wallcovering was made. Kelly has a master’s degree in printmaking and I thought she would be able to explain the process to me. As she was explaining how she thought it was made we had one of those moments that you can only have in your 20’s (when you aren’t married and you have no children) where we looked at each other and said, “we could do that……we SHOULD do that”. Six weeks later I had given notice at my job (a job I thought was my dream job when I took it) and we were in the studio working on our first collection of patterns. That conversation was like a little spark of magic that has given me the most exciting and fulfilling career I could ever imagine.
For the past twenty years, Porter Teleo has been creating hand painted wallcoverings and textiles by hand, one panel at a time. Our products are specified all over the world by the most influential designers and architects for use in the most noteworthy projects. Created in the same way as fine art and made to order by our team of artists, our products are by definition entirely unique and visually stunning. Setting trends rather than following fads, Porter Teleo’s innovative perspective is unlike anything else in the marketplace. – Bridgett Cochran
My background is in fine art. I grew up needing a drain in the floor of my room as a kid. Unfortunately, there was carpet there and it took me until I was in my twenties to get my first studio! (lol) I have a traditional fine arts background, where I studied painting, printmaking and filmmaking in art school and graduate school. I was teaching at the college level and showing my fine art in galleries when Bridgett and I brainstormed Porter Teleo. To me, it seemed like the most perfect collaboration between Bridgett and myself. And in terms of the creative power behind this type of collab, I thought – this is the most extraordinary opportunity to push some of the 2D work I was working on into the more 3D world, where scale would no longer be limited and where the site itself would actually become part of the piece as well. Porter Teleo for that reason is the quintessential merge between art and design. Between expression and functionality. This is where the magic of our work lies, it brings together the raw expressive impact of art with the controlled, beautiful, purposeful agenda of design. -Kelly Porter
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
As every business did, we had to make some incredibly large and swift pivots during covid. The core of our sales model is face to face appointments with clients sharing the collection and highlighting new products. At the beginning of covid we had relationships with showrooms across the country which is a pretty standard practice for companies in our industry. No-one was taking appointments but it quickly became clear that everyone was going to be doing things to their homes. We had to re-group quickly and come up with a new plan of action for making sure our hand painted papers and textiles were in the forefront of our client’s minds as they pulled together finish samples for the projects that were coming from every direction. We decided to take back the management of our sales efforts, skipping the showroom model all together. We increased our sample size across the collection by a significant amount, started sending these large size samples with our product introduction packages, and began meeting with clients via zoom. We separated the departments of our company and created production pods that worked together exclusively, and we cut our budget to a bare bones model until we were clear on what was going to happen. It was obviously such a terrible time for the world, but it brought about many positive changes for our business model that helped to fuel growth and an incredible sense of camaraderie within our team. – Bridgett Cochran
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
I think the most important thing is in letting go of the ‘This is how we must do things’ kind of management, and rather trusting people to grow, learn and develop themselves through time, so that they can be empowered to improve their own processes and systems. Encouraging individual growth and empowerment allows people to become great leaders. We have a tremendous amount of leaders at Porter Teleo and that is because there is an environment that supports this type growth and learning. Just like in any relationship, it is important to value different points of view and to be curious about doing things differently. We typically do not see two different points of view or opinions as conflicting and/or problematic, but rather as an opportunity to learn even more about the very thing we are working on. Our staff at Porter Teleo is extremely intelligent and creative, and so we try to foster that and listen to great ideas that come out, rather than focusing on a “one-course” way to move forward. This I think not only fosters an environment with a high morale but also leads to great new innovative ways of seeing things. -Kelly Porter
Contact Info:
- Website: www.porterteleo.com
- Instagram: @porterteleo
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/52886368/admin/settings/
Image Credits
One picture has the person to credit in the file name. The other 3 pictures would be Ivory Lacina and the headshot is credited to Ron Berg