Bright Idea: Illuminating Decision

Jonathan Junker and Seth Grizzle saw the light in 2008 when most business owners werent seeing even a glimmer at the end of the recessionary tunnel. The two architects founded Graypants Inc. as a way to tap their seemingly boundless creative energy.

In that first year, they continued working at separate Seattle firms while moonlighting at Graypants, so named because they wore the same color slacks for their big presentations at Kent State University. Grizzle went full time in 2009. Junker followed in 2010.

You could call SoDo-based Graypants a design studio. But we also like to think of ourselves as a creative think tank, says Junker, the firms design director. Our projects could be anythinga new house for somebody, a new chair or a light fixture.

A line of light fixtures happens to be Graypants hottest commodity. Called Scraplights because the shades are made from repurposed corrugated cardboard boxes, they are contemporary sculptures not unlike coil-built ceramic forms but with laser-cut cardboard rings glued atop each other into an endless variety of shapesglobes, ovoids, cylinders, you name itthat retail for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.

When they started the firm, Junker and Grizzle, the firms creative director, would actually scavenge back alleys, trash bins and any other places that might offer up free cardboard. Now they have arrangements with car dealers and other willing providers, so dumpster diving is no longer necessary. But even as the business scales upwardGraypants has doubled its sales every year since the beginningJunker and Grizzle remain committed to environmentally conscientious sourcing and production. Its the right thing to do, Junker explains. Used cardboard is pretty abundant.

So are creative ideas at Graypants, which now boasts 16 employees10 in Seattle and six at a new facility in the Netherlands. The lighting line is branching into recycled glass and aluminum. Not to mention ping-pong balls. Witness the huge cloud installation Graypants created for the five-story lobby of a business in the Bay Area.

We needed a bigger creative outlet, Junker says, and thats why Graypants started. I dont think well ever be finished.