By Janis Mara, Business Writer
FURNITURE designer Eric Pfeiffer shows off his creations in his Oakland studio. (D. Ross Cameron – Staff)
A TRIP up the winding roads of the Oakland hills to a furniture


designer’s office surrounded by redwoods, with the coos of mourning doves in the background, leads to the last place you’d expect a high-tech workstyle to be carried on.
But Oakland designer Eric Pfeiffer, known for his innovative designs, is also innovative in his business strategies, using a Web-based service to manage his business and provide electronic signatures for contracts.
Pfeiffer, 36, creates furniture, housewares, toys and lighting sold by Bay Area-based Zinc Details and Design Within Reach as well as other stores worldwide. His company is something of a family business — his wife, Melissa Pfeiffer, founded Oakland-based Modernseed, which sells toys, furniture and clothing for kids; and their two children, ages 4 and 7, test-drive many of his designs.
The designer strives to be environmentally sensitive with his materials, and his streamlined form of contracting and billing — the “paperless office” — is congruent with that approach.
PFEIFFERIBusiness 2″It cuts down on the time I have to spend digging around trying to find a file or having to file something,” said Eric Pfeiffer, whose molded, or “bent,” plywood designs are in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and sold through the New York Museum of Modern Art.
He uses EchoSign software to keep track of documents such as contracts and nondisclosure agreements, and also for document exchange and execution. When just these services are used, there is no fee to use EchoSign. Palo Alto-based EchoSign offers additional service starting at $12.95 a month.
When Pfeiffer affixes his signature to a contract, he faxes the document to EchoSign, which then sends PDFs — online reproductions of the document — to the client, to Pfeiffer and anyone else he requests.
Pfeiffer has been designing furniture for 10 years, but just struck out on his own with Pfeiffer Lab last year.
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The sprawling studio, with crayons and paint splashed on the floor and countless forms of nascent furniture, is where Pfeiffer’s son and daughter test the designs of children’s toys and furnishings.
“My kids think they’re playing, but they’re really experimental subjects,” Pfeiffer jokes. Recent creations include, appropriately enough, a brother-and-sister chair, shaped something like an upside-down U with seats on both sides facing in opposite directions.
“My son likes to climb on top of it,” Pfeiffer said. Another recent design is a seat with a chalkboard surface that kids can write on.
Prices for Pfeiffer’s creations range from $139 for the “mag table,” a birch combination side table, to $1,250 for a “pocket desk” with a space-saving pullout tray.
The “mag table,” one of Pfeiffer’s earlier designs, has sold all over the world. The designer also authored a book, “Bent Ply,” about plywood furniture.
“Bent plywood is much more efficient,” Pfeiffer said. “You can use more parts of the tree in the final product; there’s less waste. It’s a lot stronger, and you can use less wood than with standard construction.”
The designer’s goal is “to create something timeless that a person can have 50 years. Everything we have in our society is so disposable. I want to create something with such craftsmanship that it will last. A table might cost twice as much, but it won’t fall apart five years later,” Pfeiffer said.
Business Writer Janis Mara can be reached at (510) 208-6468 or jmara@angnewspapers.com.