Twelve South

Three years after launching their first Mac exclusive product, Twelve South expands from the dining room table to the front cover of Kiplinger’s.

Charleston, SC, May 10, 2012 – The June 2012 issue of Kiplinger’s magazine is out, and the cover features Twelve South’s co-founder and CEO, Leigh Ann Green. The cover story, featuring Twelve South and three other companies with owners who were inspired to turn their passions into successful businesses, hits newsstands this month. Twelve South was launched by Leigh Ann Green and her husband Andrew Green in 2009, with a mission to design premium accessories exclusively for Apple computers.

Why just for Apple? “It was always our feeling that Apple users – like us – deserved thoughtfully designed accessories, worthy of the iconic products they accompany,” says Leigh Ann. “So we decided to devote Twelve South 100% to making Apple-only accessories.”

As the Kiplinger’s article “How to Create a $1 Million Business” points out, Leigh Ann and Andrew Green started the business in their home, using their children’s college funds and a second mortgage as seed money to fund the business. Their courage and passion for great design paid off when their first two product prototypes, cobbled together from scrap metal and a manila envelope, were sold to Apple retail store buyers on their first try. “It was a scary moment,” admits Leigh Ann Green. “We put it all on the line and it paid off for us.”

Today the company is 12 employees strong and sells its impressive roster of made-for-Mac products worldwide through TwelveSouth.com and Apple retail stores. The Charleston, South Carolina-based brand’s best-selling product to date is BookBook, a hardback leather case for MacBook, iPad and iPhone that looks like a vintage book.

The June 2012 issue of Kiplinger’s is on newsstands now. You can also find the article about Twelve South online at Kiplinger.com, and see the products that have made Twelve South a success story at www.twelvesouth.com.

Click here to read the original release.

In case you’ve missed it (though most of the world didn’t, as it was rated the most effective advert this holiday season), here’s the now-famous Santa/Siri Ad for the iPhone 4S, compliments of our friends at Apple:

“Honored to have met Steve. Forever changed.”

-Andrew Green, Founder & Creative Director

When we think of clean lines and modernism — the likes of which invoke a certain sentimentalism for European architects of the 20s and 30s, such as Charles-Eduouard Jeanneret (aka Le Corbusier) and Alvar Aalto — we lust for this Chaise from hand-made furniture artisans at Thos Moser.

Sure, it’s got lovely lines and beautiful color finish and perhaps the smoothest leather we’ve felt since the loss of a certain Banana Republic black leather jacket we wore in the early 90s. But it’s more than that — to sit in one of these is to be swept away. You can feel your spine relaxing one vertebrae at a time as you settle in…you could just as easily be on a beach somewhere than in a certain Washington, DC showroom of the aforementioned company. Add a drink-of-your-choice and an empty calendar and you might just stay there forever. (Or maybe we should suggest that you add an iPad housed in a nice leather BookBook. But you already do that, don’t you?)

Sure, it’s a chair. But it’s a chair designed to recline without the “thunk” of a Barcolounger — this one reclines with no handles or gadgets…just lean back and gravity takes over. (The company says, “The secret is in the geometry of the pivot, engineered to transfer an adult’s center of gravity from slightly upright to supine in one fluid motion,” and Thos Moser’s inspiration for this was “a contemporary  Italian-made aluminum lawn chair he sat on one afternoon in a friend’s backyard.”)

Like the good people of Thos Moser (who first introduced the Chaise back in 2000), we also find inspiration everywhere. So today we’re sharing a wonder of the seating world with you. You can get your own Chaise here. It’s a little pricey, but then, bliss usually is worth the investment.

Like many occasional snail-mailers, we’re not immune to the charms of an unusual stamp. After all, if you don’t send many letters, you need to make the ones you do send look extra special. So we’ve been known to shop USPS.com for off-the-beaten path stamps, like the American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes series, the newer Go Green stamps, the Bridge series (especially Mackinac for Priority Mail), you get the idea.

But we were over-the-top-delighted to learn that today, we can all buy stamps featuring the work of 12 Industrial Design Pioneers. Featured designers include Peter Müller-Munk, Frederick Hurten Rhead, Raymond Loewy, Donald Deskey, Walter Dorwin Teague, Henry Dreyfuss, Norman Bel Geddes, Dave Chapman, Greta von Nessen, Eliot Noyes, Russel Wright, and Gilbert Rohde. Don’t know these names? You know their work: Radio City Music Hall, Fiesta Dinnerware, Air Force One, a typewriter, the “Airflow” fan.

Get your own Pioneers of American Industrial Design stamps here.

And thanks to Design Milk for bringing this great news to our attention!

We think maybe it was marketing sage Seth Godin who first turned us onto SwissMiss and her studiomates in NYC and some of the amazing things they’re creating, finding and sharing. But we’re big fans of their list-maker Teux Deux. Yes, it’s easy to make a list — but not so easy to make a list this gorgeous and also this manageable. And now there’s an iPhone app, at the manageable price of just $2.99.

Doing the things on the list, however? So much harder than it should be.

Get your own gorgeous Teux Deux list going today…and if getting some new swag for your iPad is at the top of your list, may we just say that our Compass complements your design sensibility perfectly?

ThinkGeek has proudly introduced the Playmobil Apple Store Playset. Kids, make sure this gets on your Christmas Wish List right away!

More here:

“Stylish technology nuggets made by Apple… we just can’t seem to get enough. From iPod, to MacBook, to iPhone, to iPad. Even if we laugh our way through the announcement, thinking we’ll “never buy an overgrown iPhone”… it happens again.

So when we spotted this amazing Apple Store Playset from PLAYMOBIL™ we were admittedly in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, it’s a product designed for children much younger than ourselves. On the other hand, it’s a tiny representation of the store which sells us all the shiny Apple goodies we can’t resist. Then we noticed that the PLAYMOBIL™ iStore includes amazingly tiny iPhones, Macbooks, and iPads. Our resolve began to waver. A quick peek at the miniature Genius Bar and we were feeling a bit woozy. Then we saw the tiny Steve Jobs presenting in the Keynote Theater on the top floor and that was it. Our wallets popped out faster than you can say Jonathan Ive and we plunked down whatever money was needed to own this amazing playset.

Of course, once we had the playset, we had to get the optional Line Pack to simulate our own exciting Apple product launches. Since it comes with a tiny Woz on a tiny Segway, it was a no-brainer. We decided that Apple & PLAYMOBIL™ together is the most unlikely and awesome collaboration ever. It changes everything.

Snag the PLAYMOBIL™ Apple Store “for the kids” then whisk it away to your office and set it on display. Over lunch, a bunch of us at ThinkGeek HQ get together and play Apple Store. Christian always gets to be Steve Jobs… damn it!”

The fine print:

Check the date. (But OH the cute details! Do we see tiny little Twelve South products in there somewhere? Of course we do.)