Description

Updated Apr 12, 2006

Joel Mozersky’s transformation of an empty warehouse in downtown Austin into the latest set for MTV’s <i>Real World</i> required nothing less than the ability to turn on a dime. He immediately turned to dwr.com, the website for the catalog and retail store Design Within Reach. “The project was time sensitive in the extreme,” says the local Texas designer, “and I knew that dwr.com would have the modern, really interesting pieces I needed, in stock and ready to ship.” Mozersky’s confidence was well placed: Three weeks after he presented his ideas to MTV, the fully furnished spaces were ready for the cameras to roll on the sixteenth season of the popular reality show.
“Prior to DWR, you would either have to have access to trade-only merchants or order retail and wait up to twelve weeks,” says Jordan Benjamin, a manager at Design Within Reach, which features such classic design names as Ray and Charles Eames, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, George Nelson and Marcel Breuer. Luckily for Mozersky and other modern-furniture lovers, DWR’s business model is borrowed from Europe, says founder Rob Forbes, where “furniture design is taken more seriously and the public has greater access to well-designed products.” With DWR, that concept has come across the Atlantic and, now, straight into the heart of Texas. (via Elements of Living)