Photos courtesy of TUCCI
As the new president of TUCCI, David Schutte brings extensive leadership experience to the role, spanning key residential and contract businesses in the industry. Now, he’s set to apply his expertise to the world of outdoor furnishings. I recently chatted with Schutte about what he learned at Knoll, his take on TUCCI, and the importance of exterior spaces.
Anna Zappia (AZ): Can you tell me about your career and how you got started in the industry?
David Schutte (DS): My dad was an art school president, so I grew up around design and designers. I always wanted to be an architect and spent countless hours building international-style skyscrapers out of Legos and drawing house floor plans that in hindsight looked a lot like Neutra’s work. Over time, my focus drifted to business but I remained really interested in a better-designed world.
Fast forward to business school where I was more of a blended left-right brain thinker in a left- brain classroom. I wanted to work for a design-driven company, and very much had to chart my own course. In the home I grew up in, my dad had a vast design library. I was always drawn to the big red Knoll book which very much put the company on my radar at a young age. So, I reached out to Knoll about an internship and ended up with a summer position and a full-time job after getting my MBA.
I’ve been fortunate to have marketing, sales, and general manager leadership roles at some of the best brands in our industry—not just Knoll but also Holly Hunt, Herman Miller, Maharam, and now TUUCI. I’ve worked with hard goods and soft goods, contract and residential audiences, and trade and end-users. I have a pretty healthy perspective on our industry that I’m excited to bring to TUUCI.
AZ: What did you learn at Knoll
DS: With five different positions over the years, it’s hard to say what I didn’t learn at Knoll. But let me share a few things that I will always carry forward.
Florence Knoll’s legacy looms large at Knoll, and her approach instilled in me that furnishings must serve both aesthetic and functional needs, and that furniture is a supporting actor to interior architecture and to the inhabitants of the space. It’s a mistake to create furniture in isolation, without understanding the problem to be solved or how it relates to everything around it.
Mies van der Rohe famously said, “God is in the details.” And at Knoll, that was very much a part of how we thought. On the product side, the overall form mattered, but what separated high design from middling design was the execution around details. And that mantra went beyond product design to everything we did at Knoll, whether production, marketing, sales, or service.
AZ: What do you think we’ve learned from the pandemic?
DS: Particularly in the early days of the pandemic when everything was changing in real time, we learned that teamwork, relationships, and collaboration mattered more than we would ever have imagined. No one person could tackle everything coming his or her way, and no one individual could see around the corner.
We’ve also learned a lot about agility and resilience. It’s a good reminder that we are far better equipped to handle change than many of us believe.
Most of us probably feel we work in an industry that rarely captures any attention in the larger “civilian” population. However, thanks to the pandemic, there is now endless interest in the future of work, the workplace, and other settings. This is our industry’s opportunity to seize the moment and partner with designers, architects, and real estate leaders to redefine how environments look, feel, and function. In these moments of great change, our society needs smart design to help lead us forward.
AZ: What are some of the ways we will move forward post-pandemic?
DS: More than a decade ago, the industry had an epiphany. Thanks to wireless technology, work became something you do, not necessarily somewhere you go. When work could happen anywhere, the office needed to be a magnet that attracted workers and connected them to one another.
I’m a big believer that COVID-19 has been an accelerant to pre-existing trends, including the dispersion of work and the elevation of the physical workplace from utility to strategic importance. In an era when many people think their jobs can be done remotely, the physical workplace must be the glue that binds an organization together through the “four C’s”: building community, encouraging collaboration, fostering creativity, and imbuing culture. The imperative for excellent design work has never been greater.
Another trend that will accelerate is the workplace looking and feeling more home-like. Recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article about how work wardrobes will become even more casual. When we’ve seen each other Zooming from the sofa or deck in athleisure, why wouldn’t that migrate to the office? It’s hard to imagine Lululemon paired with stiff, formal office furnishings in a windowless, soulless conference room.
We’re also seeing an increasing number of workplaces create thoughtful outdoor spaces that are an integrated part of their work ecosystems. In the past, organizations would put a few tables outside for lunch breaks. Today, facility leaders are seeing their outdoor areas as underutilized assets to engage workers and create appealing casual teamwork settings that can be used from day into night. It’s a pretty remarkable shift, but speaks to the increased quest for natural light, air, and a healthier lifestyle.
AZ: How would you describe the TUUCI brand?
DS: TUUCI is a brand that’s always stood out to me by redefining the often overlooked world of outdoor shade. Back in the late 1990s, company founder Dougan Clarke was frustrated by the poor caliber of outdoor umbrellas which couldn’t stand up to the harsh climatic conditions in his native Miami. With skills learned from a lifetime on the water, Dougan applied marine-grade quality, meticulous engineering, and high design to reinvent a previously mundane category.
Dougan created a culture that is based on curiosity, creativity, and exploration. The mission is much broader than umbrellas, and embraces the larger world of shade and life outdoors. TUUCI is a company that thinks about possibilities and challenges the way things have always been done. That’s the kind of organization that’s well poised for the velocity of change happening right now.
AZ: What are some specific areas that you want to focus on first at TUUCI?
DS: TUUCI has been incredibly successful at what it does, but also possesses a healthy degree of restlessness and interest in what’s next. I was hired to help lead TUUCI into its next chapter of growth. There is no shortage of great ideas for expansion, and my task will be to work with the team over the coming months to help define which ones to pursue. I’m not quite ready to share those ideas, but stay tuned.
As president of TUUCI, I also oversee a sister brand, Pavilion, which focuses on contract-grade, high-performance outdoor furnishings. We’re working with a number of talented outside designers on a series of new products that combine clean, contemporary design with quality and performance. With workplaces increasingly including outdoor spaces, I do think the contract industry needs more reliable resources like Pavilion for domestically produced, high-performance products.
AZ: How do you think about how your other work experiences will shape what you bring to TUUCI?
DS: Over the last decade, we’ve all become much more conscious of the need for nature and overall wellness. Throw a pandemic on top of that, and people are really eager to live more of their lives outdoors, at work and at home. People are just happier and more relaxed outdoors, and are apt to feel their best.
I believe in the power of place, now more than ever. I have spent my career helping to create compelling spaces in which to work and to live, and I’m ready to apply that to the exterior environment. There’s been so much time spent perfecting interior spaces, but exterior space planning is really in its infancy. As outdoor spaces become more layered and dimensional, they are feeling more like fully furnished interior spaces but with lots of new complex considerations. It’s really the last frontier for planning.
We’re in an era in which industry walls are crumbling. Residential informs hospitality, which informs contract. The lines between trade and consumer are blurring. And indoor spaces bleed into the outdoors. There’s so much cross-learning potential. My hope is to not only share my broad experience, but also help TUUCI lead our clients into a more holistic view of design that encompasses interior and exterior spaces equally. We are at a tremendous inflection point in our industry, and there’s perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to define the future together.