1. Stay cool: Treat the seller with respect. Some buyers start tearing out stuff the minute the seller puts down their box. Don’t be that buyer. Ask the seller nicely about what they have and keep your spot. If you see something you like, pick it up and hold on to it while the seller puts up more things. Don’t seem to happy about the things you find as it’s a clear giveaway that you’ve struck gold. You will often be priced accordingly.

2. It’s a game: It’s both a game of who can get to it first and also who can get it for the least amount of money. Regardless of what people say, bargaining is a part of the flea market culture. But don’t be greedy. I most often pay the asking price and I’ve paid more on many occasions when the price in my opinion has been much too low. If you stay true to rule number one, you have a bigger chance of getting the discount. A good deal is one where both parties walk away happy.

3. Discover the things no one else sees: First off, look at what people are sitting on. I’ve bought a number of Aalto Aalto stools and other design chairs over the years and you would be surprised how often people will sell their seats at the end of the day. Be sure to ask only when the sellers are on their way home as they have brought their seats for a reason. The end of the day is also the time when you can get the best deals. Don’t only go for the things that are trendy right now. Buy what you like and look for the next big thing. Value is based on supply and demand.

4. Scan quickly first, then focus: There are essentially two schools – slow meticulous scouring or fast overviewing. I usually go for alternative two since I enjoy the live flea markets more (as opposed to aisle self serving markets). Sellers put out the obvious things first and that’s what everyone goes for. Get to them first by moving fast. After the obvious things, focus on the hidden things. Most buyers don’t do that.

5. Extra baggage will slow you down: If your hands are tied up with bags, you are at a disadvantage. Bring a backpack or shoulder bag to keep your hands free. When you’re worrying about irrelevant things your focus in on other things than what matters at the moment.

6. When in doubt, ask: If you find one piece of a set, the rest is often nearby. If not, ask.

7. Take advantage of the situation: If you find one good thing at a place that you often visit (Goodwill or similar) and rarely find anything at, chance is that you’ll find other things as well. This usually means that they received a new donation and it hasn’t been picked yet. Keep on looking.

8. No two markets are alike: Look for hard to get to hunting grounds since the fewer people who have found the market, the bigger the chance of success.Untapped markets are the best.

9. Dirt is good: There are places that people don’t go to because of fear, prejudice or laziness. Therein lies opportunity.

10. It’s a journey: Flea markets are a place for serendipity. If you come with a mindset of finding something specific, you will be disappointed. I’m always amazed at how often I come across things that I would never have expected to find. You just need to be persistent and keep on trying. At least you’ll learn something along the way.

These are my rules. What are your rules?

Those are my words that sparked a heated discussion between my colleagues and I in a LA hotel lobby at 11pm a month ago. I said it to provoke the others to prove me wrong. In a world where digital content is sharable and free for the taking, with minor risk of getting caught, you will have a hard time arguing that you can both make money with images and protect them from being misused. Images are quickly becoming a perceived free commodity and a majority of the content being shared online legally and illegally are images. The generation born in the 80′s and after perceive content as being free to use as long as you state the source and it appears that some members of the mainstream media see things what way too.

I’ll give you an example. One of the pictures on our wall at home is a print I created and ordered online based on works of a well known Finnish artist. It wasn’t available as a print so I made it myself. Another example are my Knoll posters that I made a few years back. You wouldn’t believe the number of requests I’ve received about who to contact at Knoll to get the hig-res files to print them. The value that the images have is in marketing and releasing them would benefit everybody.

I’m also true to it myself. All 5000+ images I have on Flickr are free for anyone to use, even for commercial purposes as long as you reveal the original source. This way I at least stand a chance of knowing where they get used and I have seen them on dozens of blogs and high profile publications. The emotional value of the photos I’ve taken at parties, vacations and special occasions is immeasurable but the monetary value is in most cases zero.

I was reminded of out late discussion today by an email from a prospective client. Our customer approach at the company I work for has often been to make demos for clients and then send them off to them to see if we can find mutual ground. This particular demo was made using hig-res images I found online through a search with Google Images. I simply linked to them and added overlay tags, never copying the content. The tags contained content which I figured would add value to the image such as information about the products and commercial links.

One of the images looked something like this:

They did however not see any value in it and asked me to delete the site I set up destroying the content in the process.  This is the first time after more than 100+ demos that this has happened. Usually we’re embraced and greeted as saviors since most people know that the world is quickly crumbling for anyone trying to control the access and sharing of content. The simple truth is that if you can’t add value and preserve the context of your content, there is little money to be made. Whenever the above image is shared, the tags follow and thus the context, the commercial links and the information about what is in the image. It’s about telling a story, adding another dimension and providing additional value.

But then again, some images are obviously worth a lot.

As you sometimes say to me, love doesn’t grow out of big deeds but out of a collection of small actions. So I love that you made me dinner today. I love how you surprise me with ideas and words I didn’t know you had. I love that you like pineapple more than water melon because it tastes more. I love that you covered our floor with jigsaw puzzles. I love that you introduced me to shorts. I love that you read a book a week and don’t say anything although I only read web articles. I love that you would put our money on travelling even if  we were down to our last cent. I love that you understand that I’d put our last cent on a chair. I love that you moved in and rearranged my world.

But most of all I love that you bring out the best in me every day.

You are my voice of reason, the love of my life and my direction in my darkest hour.

Honey, wherever you’re going I’m going your way.

We set up a few ground rules for what kind of apartment we were interested in.

• Remember the mantra: location, location, location. The house needs to own the ground it is built on, since nothing else really matters. In the coming years the long term ground rental costs will go up and this is a fact that will follow you as long as you own the property. The house might in a worst case scenario even burn to the ground. The building itself has only part of the value and in order to keep it’s value it needs to be constantly maintained.
• The apartment should have been built before the 1940′s. This was mostly due to personal taste but old building have a different structure than the often hastily built houses built after 1945. Older houses are also in our opinion more architecturally interesting and are better planned, especially when it comes to smaller apartments like ours.
• All larger renovations need to have been done including pipes, facade and other costlier updates. The house should preferably have more than 50 shareholders making the burden of coming renovations easier. Our house has over 100. Preferably only a few of the apartments in the house should be owned by the city. It took half an hour on the phone to find the person to talk to about it but we succeeded and five of our apartments are owned by Helsinki.
• Internally, the apartment should not have been renovated during the last  ten years, leaving us with the opportunity to do it ourselves without having to pay extra for someone else’s bad taste.
• The house should have a low per square meter compensation at around 2,5 €. This is essential since it’s a solid cost that will come back to haunt you every month as long as you own the apartment and it is likely to rise. It will also eat into your profits if you decide to rent it out to someone else.
• The existing house stock holders should not have the right to amortize the apartment if we make a bid on it. This stings and I’ve seen how devastating it is for couples who have made a bid and see it go through just to see it be taken away by someone with too much loose cash. You will also loose two weeks while waiting for the resolution.
• If we see an apartment we like, we will bid on it, full price to avoid a bidding war.

During the course of three days we saw a number of different apartments but only one of them seemed to stand out. It was a 43 sqm two room apartment that matched all our criteria. The woman who was selling the apartment was the owner and it is always nicer to deal with someone who really personally knows what they are selling. It also turned out to have a low square meter price that seemed to be picked straight from the latest report on the average selling price. As this was a single room apartment it ought to have been about 20 % higher. We made a bid and she took it. A week later, after speaking to our bank, we owned the apartment.

There is much talk about the housing bubble in the Nordic European countries since there has been a constant rise in prices for over 15 years now. This is mainly due to structural problems in housing politics, which has led to a imbalance in supply and demand. In my opinion we will only see a substantial decline if there is a new recession, an increase in unemployment, a property selloff by investors, an increase in housing construction, a change in the taxation rules and the interest rates shoot up to 6-7 percent. To be honest we didn’t really think about the tax return or the low interest  rates when buying this flat. We figured like many others that buying the apartment would be cheaper in the long run than renting. With the low rate of interest we would essentially be paying more rent than paying installments on the loan for a brief period of time and then we would have a state protected interest roof. We are well aware that there has not been a stable development in the housing sector and we are well aware that the prices might start declining as early as in the summer of 2011 but we are content with a zero gain game. The main thing for us is having a solid small place to live.

In my opinion a stable place to live is a basic right and housing should never be used for speculation. But since this is the case, you just have to prepare well. I hope these pieces of advice will help you in your own quest.

Do you agree with me? What are your thoughts on buying a property?

We got the idea for our roadtrip when planning a vacation to the US. Neither of us had ever been in America so we had a lot of places to choose from. When we couldn´t make up our minds on where to go, we decided to go everywhere.

How to get started:

The first thing you need to do is to make up your mind. How far, how fast and for how long? Once you answer those questions and decide which places you definitely want to see and which you can leave out you pretty much have your route lined out. We wanted to visit LA, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Telluride and New York so we planned our trip according to that. San Francisco was also on the list, but we had to leave it for another trip because we didn´t have enough time. Our trip lasted 17 days, and 14 days we spent crossing the continent. Of course you can never have too much time, but you do see a lot in 17 days. At least if you have a good plan.

Once we had decided the route we started to plan a schedule of some kind. We used Google Maps to check routes and distances to plan how much time we needed to get from one place to the next. Google Maps estimates pretty accurately how long the drive will take but it always took less time to cross the distance compared to what Google Maps said. When you know how much time you need on the road you just have to decide on how much time you want to spend in each place. Strive to leave at 8 AM each day and drive until 3 PM. That way you will still have time to do something in the place that you arrive to and you won’t be too tired. We did one straight nine hour drive through Kansas and we were quite beat after that.

View Across the States in a larger map

Lodging:

We booked approximately half of our lodging in advance, which took away some of the spontaneity but also made the trip somewhat smoother. In four cities we stayed with friends and of course we had to agree in advance on which days we would show up on their doorstep. Staying with friends is a good tip; aside from spending time with them you also have someone to tell you the do´s and don’ts of the place. That saves you both time and money.

We also booked a motel at the Grand Canyon in advance as it is a major tourist attraction and fills up pretty fast in the summer. In bigger cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas we booked hotels in advance because we knew which days we needed to be there and because we thought it would be easier to arrive in a big city and have an address to go to, which turned out to be true. But some times during the trip we just decided to stop for the night at a roadside motel when we didn´t feel like driving anymore that day. As long as you have a plan of some kind of where you´re going and when you need to be there, be as spontaneous as you like. Some of our best and worst stops were unplanned.

The car:

On a coast to coast road trip your best friend is the person sitting next to you and the car. Even though we do not condone the use of big gas guzzlers, on a trip like this they do feel like a good choice. The best reason for driving a big car in the US is simple: everyone else does. If you don’t you´ll feel like an ant zick zacking between lanes on the highway. And of course a big car is comfortable on such a long drive, and since gas is cheap over there it won’t ruin you. The whole 5500 km drive only cost us around 350 euros in gas money.

One thing you want to have in the car is a GPS. Pay the extra 100 dollars for it, you won´t regret it. It not only guides you to the place you´re going, it also tells you where the closest restaurant, gas station, outlet, ATM or you name it is.

Except for paying an extra 100 bucks for the GPS, we also bought an insurance that covered all costs up to one million dollars even if we smashed someone else´s car. It made us feel more secure, but do as you like. We rented our car from Avis and we made the reservation at home online before we went, but you can also walk into a car rental and rent it when you get there. The biggest cost for us was the “leaving cost”. Since we rented the car in LA and left it in NYC we had to pay almost 1000 dollars for leaving it so far away. The total cost of the car with insurance and GPS was a little more than 2000 dollars.

We dropped the car off at JFK Airport and took a cab flat rate into Manhattan. You don´t want to take your car there if you don´t have to. Believe us.

We spent the longest time in New York, 4 days, which was a good decision. In retrospect we´re amazed at how well everything worked out, we didn´t have any problems along the way. The only thing that would have made the trip even better would have been more time. We experienced a lot, but for example a few more days in LA would have been nice, and it would have been fun to make that extra stop in Nashville if we would have had the time. But then again, even with a few more days the feeling of wanting to do a little bit more would probably still be there.

The total cost of the trip for us both including everything – food, lodging, flight tickets, car, gas etc was 6200 euros.

To keep things interesting, we left around 250 “We heart america” cards with our information and site address in every place we stopped at (the featured image is one of them). We sometimes took photos of the place where we left them and you can find all of the images from the trip on Flickr.

We also made a list of songs of songs that we in one or another way associated with the US and this is our Spotify list. Also make sure to stock up on podcasts for the long eventless drive through the midwest. The CD cover is below.

Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in 2006

Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globe awards in 2011

Barack Obama : Call To Renewal

Dwight Eisenhower – The Military Industrial Complex

Fidel Castro – History Will Absolve Me

Michael Moore’s “Shame on you Bush” speech

Ford Pardons Nixon

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN – “9/11 was an inside job”

Olof Palme criticizing the hard-line Czechoslovak regime in 1968

Hugo Chavez at the UN General Assembly

The navigation works well and the app is reliable, but it is too predictable. New technology or a new medium always tends to mimic the characteristics of the old ones. When making the transition from analog to digital you need to look at the best parts of the old product and transform them so that they align with the possibilities of the new one. I will not pay for and consume content that has been published 9-12 hours earlier when the main point of it is that it’s served fresh. The iPad app’s content does not change during the course of the day, compared to the iPhone app that is constantly updated, although in a much more condensed free version. If you do offer old content, you’re expected to have insights and commentary that no one else is able to offer and preferably from people you know and trust. Compare it to buying an assortment of international coffee blends with unlimited refills, without knowing who made it or when it was made.

This is what I would like to see. Look at what Flipboard is doing and make as many of your editors equal members in a network of content producers. Allow them to release their material immediately when it is ready and include all – text, images, video, graphics and virtually everything you produce (and no being cheap with the image releases, make albums). Make it a current flow of content that stretches through a 24 hour news cycle. Naturally most of the content will be released between 7 AM and 23 PM but in between you can have curated news agency content. The readers will get a more natural news cycle and a closer relationship to the people making the news and thus to the news agency itself. Better still, create lists of editors to follow and allow readers to customize it.

Allow people to share the content through the app (not possible now) and let their friends access it with a similar model as the New York Times, although only showing a bit of the content. Allow people to access and pay for the content in as many ways and on as many platforms as you can handle. People will still read the shortened articles but an ever growing number of them will move across to pay. People will of course copy your material but then there will always be a delay in it. The key is the constant flow and the knowledge that your’re getting a fresh brew from a trusted network of coffee connoisseurs.

1950′s

The 1950′s is all the rage again and I suppose it partly can be attributed to the media’s recent interest in the decade. I’m of course referring to shows such as Mad Men or films such as Revolutionary Road. You can see the influence it has on fashion and design, it the way that the current design is shaped by old ideals and how old models are yet again taken into production.

It was a time of prosperity and in a way the birth of the modern consumer culture. The US stood in the forefront as a beacon of how capitalism could serve the society best and with the new need for TVs and fridges came the need for new innovative product ideas. The 50′s innovation was a break with the old but it was supported by a solid knowledge of the craft. Starting in the late 40′s, a new more organic modernism saw the light of day and designers such as Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen became household names on the other side of the Atlantic, while Ilmari Tapiovaara and Tapio Wirkkala got their big break over here in Finland. Timo Sarpaneva‘s Orchid glass sculpture was chosen by House Beautiful as the “Most beautiful object in the world”. Skanno, Marimekko, IKEA’s concept and Vitra entered the market. Sweden held their H55 fair showing that a new way of living and decorating had arrived. It was truly a time of change.

I brought four main things to the studio: Kaj Franck’s Kilta ceramics, teak objects, Kaunis Koti magazines and the Antti Nurmesniemi pot. Check the Thinglink image tags below for more info and links.

As always there was the question on how to score at the thrift market. Although I’m surprised that the interest in the decade is still strong, this time I said that the market is fairly tapped out when it comes to 50′s design but that the crucial factor is knowledge of what to look for, here illustrated by the 1 euro Arabia wall plate. If you are looking for furniture then I believe that the coming years will feed the market with the leftovers from closed old libraries, factories and offices. This is of course only a qualified guess but looking at the structural changes in our society this is the conclusion you might draw.

1960′s

The 1970′s

 

 
I wasn’t all too happy with the 70′s episode, partly because I don’t like the decade and partly because the lack of structure in the 11 minut discussion. The 70′s were in my opinion a transitional period and it was only in the earlier and later part that we saw interesting developments. In the early 70′s the plastic rage was still in full effect and in the late 70′s we saw the emergence of anti-design.

The 1980′s

The 1990′s / 2000′s / Beyond