Corporate Art Collections - Delving into the hows and whys of Business and Art - Schmoozing Over Coffee

August 15, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
2 Comments

Image source: chinadaily.com

When we hear of business and art, we think of something eye-catching that companies must have come up with in terms of packaging or display in collaboration with graphic artists or designers. But, there is a whole different side to the words Business and Art when said together, that is known as Corporate Art Collections.

To tell you a bit about what Corporate Art Collecting is - large organizations develop a collection of contemporary art for their office spaces. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. There is an arduous process involved.

Why do Companies wish to buy art?

To Inspire and Invigorate

The primary purpose of the corporate collector is to build an inspirational workspace for its employees. Art is always considered to be thought provoking, and these companies want their employees to gain different perspectives and approaches to their work by being exposed to art pieces. Art is always open to interpretation and triggers creativity in people and because of this, the companies want its people to be inspired in their own ways and go about bringing a change in their work. Sometimes, quite a bit of provocative work is also hung around, just to challenge the intellect of the employees.

Brand Image

Art is used as a part of the marketing mix for brand building and global image. The art that is collected is not supposed to be just any aesthetically pleasing piece of work. It has to be a representation of the values of the company. Every piece of work is carefully selected to align with the kind of image they want to portray to its customers.

Banks and Investment firms, that is, organizations that deal with numbers and are never associated with art in any layman's mind, are actually the biggest art collectors - JP Morgan Chase, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Aspen Insurance Holding Ltd to name a few. In fact, investment firms believe that hanging around young art in their office tells their clients that they are representatives of dynamism and are willing to invest in raw bright creative talent. As for banking institutions, contemporary art is supposed to tell its employees to keep thinking of making the bank relevant to its people because they are the ones dealing with nimble and changing situations all the time. They want to tell the clients that banks are not large sluggish giants stuck using archaic methods, but a sprightly bright athlete willing to change and chase. As a matter of fact, Deutsche Bank has even made a commitment to refresh its art collection to reflect the changing times.

Investment

Also, many would think that the reason that I am about to state is the real reason for these corporate collections, however the collectors heavily deny so. Art is an asset. Not just intellectually, but in terms of investments as well. The collectors carefully curate art that will appreciate over time, and can be sold in future to generate revenue. But, selling art does more damage for the company than good. When a company starts to sell its collection, it means that the company has hit rock bottom. Although there are times when organizations involve in healthy exchange of art, obviously for money though.

Ice breaker

Every team has at least one shy member, who is not able to melt his/her walls and approach team members or seniors. But, when employees look at a painting hanging from the wall, they start talking to each other, sharing their thoughts and opinions because they have found a safe ground to begin with and will not have any moments of awkward silence between them. Companies want to build a social work environment where there can be free exchange of thoughts. In fact some companies hold educational meets where the artists themselves come and talk about their work. These are just mechanisms used by the employees to build a more holistic forum outside the traditional work structure to cultivate relationships that might not happen in the office or even when the team heads out for a drink.

Social Responsibility

A lot of organizations even use art for their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program. Supporting young and emerging artists is a common practice. Apart from buying renowned names, companies buy artworks of young aspiring artists who are yet to make a name. Corporates feel that this way they lend more credibility to the artists and people start taking note of their work. Some even commission the emerging artists to make work which will be for the organization only and not for the world. This provides artists with financial stability and allows them to get a strong foothold. Although companies run the risk of getting art which may not appreciate in value by buying untested artists, but it then becomes a part of their CSR program. Not just artists, they also sponsor temporary exhibitions in museums. The other important sponsorship includes awards. The winner of the award has his work bought by the sponsoring company. This allows the company to tap into the latest trends.

They also try to challenge archaic societal norms. For example, Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd have a portrait of two women just staring directly at the face of their audience. Their belief is that although Aspen has quite a few female employees, the financial institutions are mostly male dominated, especially managerial teams are hardly seen as a place for women in the society. Unfortunately, their team too is a pray to this norm. So this portrait is supposed to be a constant reminder to men that they should bring about a change in this regard.

Why Contemporary Art only?

Old maritime prints and watercolours maybe fine to depict the history of the company, but they could never tell the company which direction to follow. Contemporary art defines the times in which the organizations are functioning in and one needs to flow with time to be relevant and sustainable. They cannot carry the burden of the past. Hence collections of contemporary art as supposed to be vibrant and revitalize the people associated with the company.

Deutsche Bank London Contemporary Art collection Image

Deutsche Bank London Contemporary Art Collection: Financial News

Types of Corporate Art Collectors

1. The Curators - mostly initiated by a person up in the hierarchy, who has worked in bleak offices in his prime, but fosters a love for art and wants his people to be exposed to it. They bring about their ethos to the cultural environment of their office space. There are certain office buildings which have built to make them favourable for displaying artworks.

2. Builders of Brand Identity - through art they wish to build a corporate identity. Use it as an an expression to differentiate themselves against competitors.

3. Philanthropists - these are the ones that are concerned about their social image, because in the current times every organization is bound by policy to give back to the society. So this is their way of giving back to the community.

4. All rounders - Companies that focus on building an identity that lets art permeate its brand image, social outreach and work culture.

The thread that ties them all together is their wish to make their customers perceive them in a certain light.

Challenges faced in building a collection

Maintenance of these precious artefacts in non museum environment poses as a challenge. People may bump into them and cause dents, scratches and other things that will lead to a dip in its value and a rise in the blood pressure of its collector. There was instance when an office cleaner on duty removed a chunk of metallic paint from a painting with his vaccum cleaner in an attempt to remove a spider from the painting. The poor soul was horrified, although the owners had a good laugh over it and brought back the painter to fix it, at an extra cost of course.

Justifying these expenses to the shareholders of the company. In majority of the cases the shareholders do not understand the reason for artwork in the office space, so bringing them on board is quite a difficult task. The art department and the company appointed consultant or in house curator need to make presentations and justify in every step regarding why it is acceptable to spend shareholders money in buying this particular piece.

It is also considered as a luxury for difficult financial times when jobs are being lost and salaries are being cut. So companies are blasted with the question of why choose art in such diabolic times.

Rapid appreciation in value is also a concern. If the collection becomes too valuable, it becomes a liability more than an asset because its insurance becomes a burden to the organization. The famous law firm Simon & Simon faced such a challenge once, when they realized that the maintenance cost of their collection was reaching unsustainable heights.

Consultants are required to build and maintain the collection. Unless there is someone in the company who understands art and is willing to dedicate the time and effort, it is difficult for a company to go about buying art. So consultants become a must for every organization. They have to treat corporate collectors differently from personal collectors. Consultants have to refer to the larger framework and identity of the company. The collections represent their collectors in some way or the other, so the collection should speak a message which defines their corporate identity with creativity.

Censorship is another shadow that the collectors have to keep in mind. There are some unwritten rules of the collection and they are:

No nudes or depiction of sexuality
No political work
No cultural defamation
Any work that appears offensive to the people of the company must be taken down

How to go about being a Corporate Collector?

1. Have a clear vision of how what you want to say through your art collection

2. Take professional advice. Consultants understand your brief and have greater connections.

3. Examination of display space is also imperative. Art needs to be admired and light and space play a great role in amplifying the experience art provides.

4. Budgets have to be set, because a business is a business after all and it cannot go around spending money in items that are considered decoratory by the world at large. It has to spend money on their operations than on other inspirational pleasures.

5. Storage and handling. Art is organic, so it requires to be handled with care and not carelessness. Any damage or mishandling can lead to losses of thousands of dollars.

Duetsche Bank Corporate Art Collection Image

Image source: www.db.com

So, amidst all these, it can be successfully said that the main objective through all these endevours is to ultimately maneuver the worlds perception of the company as a whole.

A book that played a major guide in my understanding of Corporate Art Collections is Corporate Art Collections: A Handbook to Corporate Buying.

Autobiography

Dior by Dior - Book Review - Schmoozing Over Coffee

August 14, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
0 Comments

The man who has built Maisan Dior - the home of Christian Dior, had never even thought that he would be the creator of one of the most popular haute couture brands across the world someday.

To begin with, he was a shy man, living happily working as a designer for a fashion house that he was very well settled in. But as chance would have it, he got called in by then industry magnate Boussac to takeover and remodel an existing fashion brand all on his own. Dior, the always doubtful man that he was, took quite a while to drive up a decision. He refused to take up the job, but offered to create an entirely new house of fashion right from scratch.

All of this happened in the year of 1947, right after the war, when Dior thought that women deserved to get out of the blase pantsuits and into something that celebrated the female form. Thus entered the "emphasized bosoms, hollowed waists and accentuated hips" in his collection "New Look" and it took the women of France by a storm.

He describes every phase of his couture life in undeniable detail and the descriptions of how he prepared for his collections every season is an absolute delight to read! He divides his process in explicable detail. About 60 sketches are formed in nights of creative haze, and then comes the visualization of those fabulous dreams. He had a team full of women dedicated to the craft to the point of it being a crime. They were there with him in all the hours he spent in the house of 30 Montaigne Avenue and lent a scrutinizing eye to everything that was laid before them. Dior, a perfectionist who drove himself, his workers, tailors and mannequins crazy, would run every piece of clothing that would go up on a mannequin, about a zillion times just to make sure that they were perfect. Often there would be moments when he would be stuck on one mannequin for hours trying to find out what was wrong with her outfit and end up adding a third button for the sake of aligning the aesthetics. Imagine the plight of the girl standing stiff in front of the man for hours at a stretch just for a button! Sometimes, he would throw away outfits, treating them as blasphemous designs, sending the model and the tailor, both into severe fits of tears. Whenever the models or their seamstresses came to him, pleading him to put their dress back in the show, he would try to explain to them with a heavy heart and say "It is true that I am demanding; but who is not, in pursuit of the realization of his dreams".

His obsession for everything beautiful was crazy. Dior had a passion for interior decor as well. Everything that was there in all his salons, workshops and stores, was his vision brought alive. The interiors also played a crucial role in his designs. He believed that there existed something called 'Salon Optics' just like Theatre Optics. The details which looked good in the workroom, didn't always look good on the model in the salon. Afterall, it was in the salon, that the deal would be sealed; all the ladies would be making their choices for purchases, the journalists will give the make or break take on the collection and retailers would make offers for unending stocks. So the clothes had to be salon ready. Bu at the same time, it couldn't happen that the clothes could only be suitable for viewing in a salon, it would then defy its main purpose of being worn around by women in general. Therefore, he had to strike the perfect balance to appeal to people both in the salon and outside it. Till the final night before the show, he would keep running between the workrooms and salons, sending piles of tules and tailors to and fro, while the models smoked while sitting semi-naked on whatever space they could find which wasn't drowned with clothing. He had a principle that he very strictly followed; he never looked at his clothes after the show was over. He believed that each creation was his child, and once they were revealed to the eyes of the world, he had given them the wings they deserved and they had lost the innocence they once possessed.

The other thing that he lost his mind about before the shows, was flowers! His love for flowers was not for professional reasons but entirely personal. Dior loved flowers as a child and has carried that love with him always to wherever he has travelled and worked. It goes without saying that a man who has such refined sensibilities should obviously be in love with flowers.

I came across something in his memoire that I have often heard modern day designer, the illustrous Sabyasachi Mukherjee say. Christian Dior wrote " Far from wanting to revolutionize fashion, I was chiefly concerned with producing a high standard of workmanship. Iaimed at being considered a good craftsman." If you are moved by reading this, then there is so much more to learn about his journey and the arduous hours spent in building the house of Dior, in not only Paris, but also New York and London, his other two favourite destinations.

Business

What goes into the making of Starbucks - Part 2 - Schmoozing Over Coffee

July 03, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
0 Comments

HOW STARBUCKS CAME INTO BEING

ORIGINS OF STARBUCKS

Starbucks was founded by Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. Neither of them aspired to build a business empire. They founded Starbucks for one reason only; they loved coffee and wanted Seattle to have access to the best kind of coffee. Their idol was a man called Alfred Peet, who was the son of a coffee trader. He is considered to be the spiritual grandfather of Starbucks as Howard likes to say. Alfred Peet in a way introduced America to fine dark roasted arabica coffee through his small store called Peet's Coffee and Tea in Berkley. Gerald and Gordon had come across this store and become die hard fans ever since. So Starbucks opened a small store in Pike Place Market and started selling high quality coffee beans by the bag imported from different parts of the world.

MODERN STARBUCKS

When Howard joined Starbucks, he was immediately drawn into the vibe that small store was expressing. Starbucks was doing fine and growing, but things took a major turn after a year. A year later when Howard Schultz went to Italy, he came across the concept of Coffee Bars and found them in every nook and corner. What amazed him was the ambiance inside those coffee bars. The baristas behind the counter moved with a certain grace, smiled and spoke with every customer as if they were not customers but friends and served extremely good espresso based drinks. This Italian way of espresso making with a personal touch catapulted Howard into a different arena and this is what Howard wanted Starbucks to be in future. However on returning to the states, the founders of Starbucks weren't on board with Howard's idea. But Howard was so determined, that he left his loving job and with the help of investors opened his first coffee bar called Il Giornale. People connected with it amazingly. And he expanded to 5 stores. Soon the chance of a lifetime came to him. Gerry and Gordon wanted to sell Starbucks entirely. Howard wanted to own the company he so dearly loved, and after a near miss, he attained Starbucks, and ever since there has been no turning back but only going onwards.

STARBUCKS LOGO AND THE NAME STARBUCKS

The Siren

The Siren has a seductive and unpredictable charm, both the qualities that Starbucks want to convey with their coffee. They want people to seduce people's taste buds with rich velvety coffee and take them by surprise by the different flavor profiles of beans of different regions.

The name STARBUCKS

Gordon, one of the founders of Starbucks, was an English teacher and loved literature. So he brought in the name Starbucks from Starbuck, the name of the first mate of the whale ship Moby Dick.

So the logo and the name go hand in hand in indicating Seduction of the coffee flavours like the Siren and the Level Headedness of the First Mate.

BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY AND STRATEGY OF STARBUCKS

BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

1. "Every company must stand for something." Starbucks stood for Dark Roasted flavour profile and nothing else for their coffee.

2. "Don't give the customers directly what they ask for. If you offer something else, something more superior, you excite them, create a sense of discovery and then loyalty." Americans didn't know about fine arabica coffee, so when they found high quality espresso based drinks it was obviously something new for them. In fact, this desire to keep serving something new, brought about the invention of Frappuccino.

3. "To mean something to customers, you should assume intelligence and sophistication and inform those who are eager to learn. If you do, what may seem to be a niche market could very well appeal to far more people than you imagine." The baristas explained to the new curious customers what the beverage was, in sophisticated and knowledgeable manners and the customer believed that they could walk in everytime and learn something or experience something new.

INNOVATION

Howard, as an entrepreneur, has been a strong pioneer of Innovation. He felt this was needed to change with the times and yet stay true to their roots. To look at it from a pinhole point of view, the rapid urge of expansion is what brought about the different bouts of innovation.

When they were opening stores far away from their roasting sites, they needed to transport their coffee beans to far distances and yet retain their freshness. A brand new Ziplock technology was developed as a solution.

They started an instant coffee brand called VIA which would replicate the taste of freshly brewed coffee without the hassle.

Started coffee flavoured beer, ice creams, bottled beverages all from the high quality coffee concentrate the R&D team of Starbucks developed.

EMPLOYEES

Howard always emphasizes on the importance of reaching the finish line with everyone and not alone, because he believes in winning together. Because of this reason, he loved his employees dearly to the core. He always treated them with utmost respect and everyone in the company, right from the warehouse workers and part time workers to high executives, everyone was meted out the same kind of treatment. He hates cutting off people. He never viewed employees as objects that eat into his profits and he believed treating them well acted as an energizer. Howard prioritised his employee's trust on the company. He wanted to give them a safe and secure place where they would be treated with equality and be proud of working. Also, Starbucks was the first company to give health benefits to every worker associated with them right down to even the part time baristas AND gave every employee, read it once again, EVERY EMPLOYEE shares. His philosophy was that if he linked everybody in Starbucks to the performance of the whole company, every employee would bring in the same attitude as the CEO who himself is a shareholder as well. In fact, he wanted to make the work environment of Starbucks of such a kind where he wished his father could have worked.

PARTNER SELECTION

Starbucks didn't chase partners, partners chased them and they would single out people from hoards of offers.

Howards had a policy - when you take on a partner and when you select an employee, be sure to choose people who share your passion and commitment and goals. If you share your mission with like-minded souls, it will have a far greater impact.

So the procedure of selecting high quality partnership in the goal of letting people have coffee everywhere went something like as follows:

1. Brand name and recognition of P

2. Good reputation of P in its field

3. P has a strong commitment towards quality and customer service

4. P must have people who understand the values of Starbucks

5. P must promise to protect the Starbucks brand and must be equally rigorous over the quality of coffee

I believe something of this sort went behind the Starbucks and Tata partnership that brought Starbucks stores to India. Given Tata's reputation of being a venerable man, it is a no-brainer Starbucks is brought to India under The Tata Alliance.

MARKETING STRATEGY

NOT A FIRM BELIEVER OF TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING

Posters, banners, pamphlets, TVCs, radio ads were not the Starbucks style. Starbucks believed in setting their brand as a marketing strategy. Starbucks is not marketing driven, it is people driven, it is product driven and value driven.

According to them great brands had a formula :

Create a distinctive memorable identity

A product that makes people look or feel better

A strong and comfortable delivery channel, i.e, Starbucks Store

And to Succeed :

Be in a category large enough to be robust and vibrant and clear with an original vision.

Starbucks always wanted to build brand loyalty. Build brand loyalty one cup and one customer at a time, communicate through their own people in the setting of their company owned retail stores.

However with changing times, they have had to resort to making their presence felt online, leading to digital marketing and even had a couple of TVCs here and there. But finding Starbucks billboards is going to be something of a rare find.

Marketing Strategy :

Educate Customers about Coffee through Baristas
Build a relationship between Baristas and Customers through their service
Spread everywhere and choose Retail Locations in highly visible, high traffic downtown sites, residential neighbourhoods, lobbies and on the going-to-work side of the street. - treat the Stores as their Billboards
Build a reputation through Retail Stores with high elegance, relevant local influential designs - treat Ambience Building as Brand Building

That is, use the Starbucks Experience as their Selling Point

They lived mostly on word-of-mouth advertising and the procedure they imagined is something s follows :

Customer enters the store

“Wow”

“I am treated so well over here”

“The Baristas know my name and my favourite drink when I come back the next time”

“I can sit here”

“That’s some great Jazz playing at the back”

“Can just close my eyes and relax a bit”

“I can get this entire experience for just $1.5 or $2”

“Can’t go to Hawaii but can treat myself to this”

Marketing Strategy While Opening In A New City

Every time they opened their doors to the public of a new city, they had a market entry strategy :

1. Hire a PR to understand heritage and concerns of a city

2. Pick a flagship site, a very visible location in a busy part of the city

3. Build a swanky, high profile store exuding the elegant and classic signature Starbucks decor

4. Creative people designed artwork that celebrated each city's personality in their merchandise or store decor or even the cups. For example - a peach shaped coffee cup for Atlanta, or the Statue of Liberty drinking coffee and many more

5. They would send out invitations to Investors and Partners and the regular mail-order customers from that city to the Store Launch.

6.They always opened their store on a famous community event

7. Before opening they always assembled a list of people who could serve as local ambassadors and that list would include :

a. Partners and their friends

b. Local Shareholders

c. Mail order customers

d. Sponsors of charities they supported with their opening night proceeds

8. Held tastings with local reporters, food critics, chefs and owners of restaurants

9. Printed material to educate people about coffee

Drafting the Mission Statement

For a man like Howard, who entwined emotions with his business to a great deal, drafting the mission statement for Starbucks was something very close to his heart.

It was a part of the Strategic Planning Process and aimed to articulate a powerful message of purpose and translate that into a set of guidelines to help them gauge the appropriateness of each decision they made at all levels of the company. In fact a draft was submitted and circulated for all to review and make changes if they desired.

Business

What goes into Starbucks - Part 1 - Schmoozing Over Coffee

June 28, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
0 Comments

What Starbucks Essentially Stands For :

"I wanted to blend coffee with romance, to dare to achieve what others said was impossible, to defy the odds with innovative ideas and to do all that with elegance and style"

High Quality Whole Bean Coffee Dark Roasted to Perfection

The numero uno responsibility of Starbucks, as they felt, was to bring the highest quality whole bean coffee to people and that the beans should be dark roasted to perfection. Starbucks holds it as a part of their policy that they will not, at any cost, compromise with the quality of the beans used and will avoid tampering with the authenticity of beans. By tampering I mean bringing in artificially flavoured coffee beans. For many customers who enjoy a nice hazelnut brew, they have often asked Starbucks to sell Hazelnut Flavoured Coffee beans, but Starbucks held its ground. It is ready to use Hazelnut syrup after the raw brew is done, but it will never bring in chemicals to the whole beans. Even when Starbucks was hit by the rising price of coffee, the idea of mixing high quality beans with that of a lower quality never struck them, because compromising with the quality would go against their values, and even if the initial round of customers wouldn't realise the variance, they themselves would know the difference, and would be ashamed in their own eyes. I guess for a company which has also ventured itself into avenues from just pure espresso based drinks, it is important that they hold on to certain grass root level principles.

No Franchisee

In fact, due to their obsession for quality, they refused to have any franchisees! Having a franchisee would mean that they cannot keep a strict watch over their quality, and if the franchisee didn't take care of the quality of their beans, of their merchandise, of their top class ambiance and service, the brand itself would falter and that is something Howard Schultz was absolutely dead against. Starbucks controlled their own distributions so that they weren't under the mercy of retailers who did not understand their product. In fact most of the Starbucks stores that you see are owned by Starbucks themselves and very few are by Starbucks Partners. They have a rigorous procedure for selecting Starbucks partners which I have later described in this essay.

Educating People About Coffee

Starbucks has long held a passion of educating people about Coffee. That was the reason why they started Starbucks in the first place right? They taught Americans what good coffee is. Took them out of their days of horrible Robusta and supermarket aisles and introduced them to the finer pleasures of coffee. This is primarily because Starbucks gets their coffee beans from different parts of the world. They get it from Sumatra, Kenya, Ethiopia, Costa Rica and several other places. So how would a customer, who is going to buy coffee by the bag, know the difference between coffee from Sumatra and that from Kenya? You need to tell them the difference, tell them why they are different, tell them about the flavour profiles and tell them which coffee will give them what they want. Starbucks wanted people to know about the coffee they were serving them. After all coffee is not just a coloured beverage, right. They can't taste the same. When even the water tastes different in different parts of the world, how does one expect coffee, that is grown on different kinds of soil and in myriad climates, taste the same? So they made sure that their baristas were very well trained and apart from making people more informed about the coffee from their baristas, Starbucks decided to make stamps indicating a local specialty from the region where the coffee has come from to give people a lingering feel about the region the coffee represents. These stamps were designed with great care to make people not forget what they learnt from Starbucks.

Design - Elegance and Style

Talking of the stamps and their design, brings me to the topic of design in relation to Starbucks. Howard Schultz was meticulous about every design aspect of Starbucks, right from their store design, to logo design, to their to-go cup design and even their coffee bag design. He keeps emphasizing the need for being elegant and stylish in everything. He believes that is what sets Starbucks apart from any other coffee retailer or cafe. For every store opened in a new neighbourhood, in a new city, in a new country, he wanted the Starbucks store to retain its signature style of wooden decor with a mild Italian Coffee Bar vibe mingled with the culture of the new space they were opening in. The store ambiance had to be a perfect balance between the elegance Starbucks stood for and the culture of the locality they were situated in, because they didn't want to lose their Starbucks touch and neither did they want their customers to feel that they had entered an alien store.

Starbucks is one of the few companies who can boast of an in-house design team, an in-house marketing team and an in-house team of architectures. Howard goes onto define the kind of work each team did, and even talks about the new automated systems their architects came up with to reduce cost and make the matter of incorporating the signature Starbucks style a seamless process. He was picky even about using styrofoam cups as to-go cups and they never made the move from paper to plastic. Their in-house R&D team is still working on making a more eco-friendly option, even though they try to recycle their cups as much as possible.

Apart from Howard's crazy obsession for maintaining quality, he had a crazy obsession for elegance and style that should be reflected from every molecule that went into building the Starbucks brand.

Coffee Is A Romantic Affair And The Quest For A Third Place

For Howard, drinking coffee is a romantic affair. He wanted people to come to Starbucks and enjoy. His philosophy was, if a person cannot afford a trip to Hawaii, he should be able to come to Starbucks and be transported to a land elsewhere.

The moment one would walk in through the doors of Starbucks, he would be greeted by a waft of dark roasted coffee beans. They would go to the barista, who would greet him with a smile and be enlightened about the different espresso based drinks that are available and why they are different. He will order a cup of excellent coffee, made from the finest beans. And while we would wait for his cup to arrive, he would soak in the immaculate style of his surroundings and enjoy the great music that would be playing in the background (Starbucks played great Blues and Jazz numbers, and people loved their song selection so much that they even had a brief successful stint of producing a collection of Blues CDs). When his coffee would arrive, his taste buds would be subjected to an elegant smooth velvety coffee and he would be able to sit down, and have a relaxed and joyful conversation with other people in the store or with his companion. - This was Howard's dream and this is what he built.

Howard clearly specifies that he wants his stores to be a Third Place. For every being the First Place is their home and the Second Place their office. The Third Place is somewhere that is warm, welcoming, where people can come and relax and enjoy themselves.

Book Reviews

Royals by Emma Forrest - Book Review - Schmoozing Over Coffee

April 01, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
0 Comments

There are some books which read like an excerpt. Like there should have been more, it finished too early leaving you wanting for more. Royals is one such book.

Imagine this. Two young beautiful people. With blemished families. With a large heart full of love. With eyes full of appreciation for beauty. With minds full of ardour for art. Meet for a few weeks. Develop friendship of a weird yet liberal, brazen yet shy kind with each other. Only for it to end abruptly and never return again.

Steven :

A young beautiful boy of 18 years old, living with his brothers, father and mother and a couple of unmarried paternal aunts working on their family business a stone's throw away. On reading this, one may possibly think what could be wrong with this boy, he is surrounded by his family. But, Steven is a boy whose love for fashion and colours and music give others the impression that he is gay, though internally he hasn't decided yet. He loves his mother to the core and she loves him to no end as well. His mother probably breathes only for Stephen 'cause her husband always returns home to knock the wind out of her. His ultimate aim is to walk out of that coop that everyone else calls home with his mother, and chalk out a different life full of love and light for the two of them.

He has a few quirks of his own, which is something every teenager child has. Steven says he would love to be taken in by Oscar Wild. He felt if Oscar Wild was alive, he would have surely adopted him.Colours are his only resort to this abusive life of his. He keeps thinking of different colour combinations and what materials they would look good on to keep his mind distracted from hurtful thoughts. He even dressed himself while listening to the Top 40 songs of England.

A blow from his father sends him to the hospital, only to change his life in the most wondrous yet sorrowful way possible.

Jasmine :

A lovely little girl of 19, often attempting suicide, yet has a heart full of feelings and a mind full of constantly popping weird thoughts just to avoid the painful ones of her mother. A young girl left in a mansion to fend for herself, when her mother is in the heavens and her father was finding his heaven wrapped in the smooth, slender, often exotic arms of youthful beauty around the world.

She states that being suicidal is in the genes, but maybe she has more reason to feel so. Maybe her attempts will bring her beloved Daddy back more often, is what she thinks. A strange Daddy for anybody to have. He comes home after months without any news of arrival, snorts coke with his daughter and vanishes in a fashion similar to that of his appearance, leaving his daughter with a few moments of happiness and a long trail of loneliness, drugs, and suicide attempts.

She is a charmer, a lover. Her words, even the rudest ones don't seem so rude because her pretty face seems to coat those words in the sweetness of caramel before darting them as arrows to people who were hopelessly in love with her. She had sex. Quite a lot of it. Not a surprise to your ears when you hear that she has a heart brimming with love. She is a person who has sex because her body loves it, and her mind thinks that the moment is such a beautiful one that it must be commemorated in some way. She often forgets the face of the person, and sometimes doesn't even bother to know the name, yet she always remembers where she had sex, how the sky looked when she had it and how she felt when she had it.

Jasmine's mind is only calm when she applies makeup, and she applies a lot of it. Other times, she has random thoughts of doing weird things apart from suicide.

Steven and Jasmine's Friendship :

Their friendship starts at a hospital. Steven is in, recovering from blows from his father, and Jasmine for recovering from her latest suicidal attempt. He catches her applying makeup and immediately his soul starved of companionship, gets attracted to this pretty girl who understands and shares his tastes and doesn't ridicule him for being himself.

The way Jasmine treats him, is difficult to fathom. He is at the intersection of a boyfriend, best friend, a human treated as an object whose owner places it in different ways out of whim and a person with whom she can share her deepest darkest fears, emotions and solitude. She kisses him full on the mouth when she wants to, just cause she wants to and knows that he wants it too. Surprised to think that Steven, a potentially gay boy could want the kiss of a woman? Well, Steven has received the love and attention of a mother only. If a man or a woman gave him attention, sought him, and kissed him, he would turn his lips to them without any hindrance, because it is not the gender of those lips that matter to him now. The fact that there are lips wanting to touch his, fills him up.
She undresses before him, giving him a full view of her bare naked body and gets into the bathtub with him. All because she knows she is safe around him and she loves him, homosexual or not doesn't irk her. Her love for him is enough to make her comfortable enough to shave her pubic hair before his eyes, for she knows Stephen's eyes are not filled with the hunger of lust, his eyes are filled with adulation for her. Jasmine thinks Stephen's penis is beautiful. No, it was not a discovery met in a moment of passionate throes, 'cause despite all the undressing and kisses, they never once touched each other in a sexual manner. Yes Steven had looked at her breasts, but it was because he was seeing a full grown female body in all the glory of its nakedness for the first time. But neither of them ever felt the need to touch each other for gratification or for consummating their friendship.
There is a haunting question asked by Jasmine, which I believe is so very relevant in today's world of confused sexual identities, and that is "Would you ever go straight for me?" This question made me rethink love. It made me question love. In fact, the entire outlook of Jasmine has made look at love from a different angle. She loves Steven for not his identity, but for his ideas, his beauty and for himself. Steven may never make love to her, yet the love they share is so genuine. Jasmine is in love with the human, not with his gender. This simplifies love to such an extent. Yet complicates it so much more.

Their friendship is also about doing things undone like sending fan letters unsent (oh, don't we all have a phase where he have penned our hearts out to those we have idolized yet not posted out of fear that those ideologies may come shattering around us lest those go unreplied to?), applying to that fashion institute which churns out geniuses yet we have no balls to buy the form, about sharing an intimate love for art and fashion and glamour and grace, about being a fearless teenager yet being a coward, about dreaming of living together, about dreaming of every fashionista's one true love - Paris. And all of this happens with the royal matrimony of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the background. How this teenager duo feel that Diana is not happy and that she is a beautiful soul, looking like a ravishing lady in the prettiest of clothes, carrying a big heart along with a sense of directionless inside that petite,demure frame of hers.

This is a friendship where there is love, velvet, dance, silk, music, corsets, Paris, kisses with the girl, brazenness, kisses with her dad, moments of high, moments of hurt, and lastly, the potent moment of death. Short lived, yet full of vigour, is what I would describe the relationship between Jasmine and Steven, and I believe that even though they had a lot more to achieve together, the summer that they had spent together shall always be theirs, can never turn sour, can never turn stale and most importantly can never be shared or relived.

Note : I received the uncorrected proof of Royals from Bloomsbury Publishing House in exchange of an honest review.

Title : Royals

Author : Emma Forrest

SOC Rating : 4/5

Genre : Literary Fiction/LGBTQ+/Contemporary

Publisher : Bloomsbury

Publishing Year : 2019

#Pages : 316

Grab the book from Amazon!