bespoke. One-of-a-Kind Custom Furnishing
Home & Yard Blvd.
Walk into the showroom at bespoke. in Minneapolis, and you may find yourself staring for hours at the detailed work you’ll discover within. Greeting customers with an array of one-of-a-kind custom furnishings to delve into and explore, from cabinets to tables to desks to a bathroom set, the showroom has on display only a sliver of what bespoke. has to offer.
bespoke. founder Keith Morgan says his business has taken on projects as small as an end table, along with ones that encompass designing and crafting an entire house. The one thing that remains constant, however, is the custom work done on each piece, which was the inspiration for the company’s name.
As Morgan explains, “‘Bespoke’ is a very old English word, and what it means is, back in the day when you didn’t go to a clothier and buy a suit off the rack, you would go to your tailor, and he would make you a suit. He would have all the folds of fabric lined up on his wall, and you would chose the fabric that you were going to have your suit made from, and that fold of fabric was then said to be spoken for. That means, then, that it truly is a one-off, unique item that is not repeated.”
Morgan took that process, and transferred it to the custom-furnishing world. He finds that fewer and fewer people are doing couture furnishings, so places such as bepsoke. quickly are becoming few and far between. bespoke. is also one of the only furniture builders in the county that will take back an original piece of work if a client is not happy with the product.
“’Custom’ is used way too much in the industry, and ‘custom’ is open to interpretation,” Morgan emphasizes. “A lot of manufacturers build products, and say they will customize them, and what that means is that they’ll make it an inch longer or two inches wider. For us, that’s not really custom—that’s changing a dimension. At bespoke., we are going to design a one-off piece for you, and we are not going to replicate that again, so it really is far beyond custom.”
The company has two workshops where its custom furnishings are handcrafted and detailed down to the square inch. The main workshop is located in St. Paul, while a smaller one is located in Morgan’s home country, the United Kingdom.
Morgan notes, “We want to see our product from when we chose the wood ourselves all the way to that product being set in the client’s home. That is all done in-house at bespoke.”
According to Morgan, while bespoke. plans to open a second showroom here early next year, and has begun to build preproduced pieces for clients seeking to avoid the customization process, the business will remain devoted to not growing too big, allowing it to continue its one-of-a-kind work.
“You have people who create the trends, and then you have people who follow the trends. We try to do our own pieces and set our own trends,” Morgan remarks. “What we do is very intimate. We want to create pieces of work that hopefully stay in our clients’ homes for years and years and years, and they get enjoyment out of looking at them every day. We are making something they are ideally going to keep forever, and that is very satisfying.”
bespoke
903 Washington Ave. S., Mpls.
(612) 746-3008
www.bespokenminneapolis.com
