Designer-Led Initiative Helps Designers Know What Vendors are Still Operating

This original article was posted at Business of Home on April 10, 2020.

While COVID-19 has brought full disruption to small and large businesses alike, it’s also brought something refreshing and bright to the design scene. Community support and camaraderie between competitors has made once-unthinkable collaborations and conversations become a reality, as designers and vendors alike become vulnerable with one other, reaching out to share struggles and ask for advice on how to continue and share resources to assist the industry, as a whole, rebound.

One designer who has been leading the way is Matt Berman, one of the founding principals of New York-based firm Workshop/APD. Their firm recognized that many designers still have projects actively continuing, leaving the designers scrambling to figure out which vendor is still manufacturing, shipping, and providing samples. To address this issue, Berman built a WAPD Design Resource guide and is sharing it with others to help out in an extraordinarily crazy time.

Other designers, such as Brad Ford, are tapping into their entrepreneurial spirits by using the shut-down of non-essential businesses to tap into a network of artisans using an online series that highlight’s different artists’ work on various social media platforms.

These times can be used for despair, or they can be used to reconnect with the world of designers in a way that would have never been believable prior to the coronavirus.