Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan | The Canadian Encyclopedia

Article

Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan

​Les Mandelbaum (born 1950, Toronto, ON) and Paul Rowan (born 1950, Toronto, ON), co-founders of Toronto-based house-ware company Umbra.

Les Mandelbaum (born 1950, Toronto, ON) and Paul Rowan (born 1950, Toronto, ON), co-founders of Toronto-based house-ware company Umbra. These childhood friends founded Umbra in 1979 to fill a perceived hole in the market for casual and accessible products for the home. Today, their innovative design principles and expansive business practices make them international leaders in home design, and they continue to rely on young Canadian talent for the creation and production of their designs.

Beginnings

Both Mandelbaum and Rowan were born and raised in Toronto. Rowan developed his interest in technology and design mixing paint and fixing windows in his father’s hardware store, and graduated from George Brown College in 1974 with a degree in graphic design. Mandelbaum attended Antioch College in Ohio, majoring in music and sociology, and returned to Toronto in 1976 to start Trans-Canada Hardware, a company that supplies parts for the construction of heavy-duty musical instrument cases. In 1979, Rowan moved to Ottawa to work for a digital typography company. While searching for decorations for his new apartment, Rowan found he was unhappy with the window shades he saw in stores, so he designed his own made of printed paper. The shades were popular with friends and family and Rowan saw business potential, so he contacted boyhood friend Mandelbaum to see if he would be interested in helping him produce them. The shades did so well at the 1981 National Housewares Association Show that they decided to create a new company, Umbra, which means “shade” in Latin.

The Garbo

Mandelbaum and Rowan founded Umbra with the goal of producing well-designed home products that are casual, fun and affordable. In 1996, they released what would eventually be recognized as the quintessential Umbra product: The Garbo. Designed by fellow Canadian Karim Rashid, the tulip-shaped Garbo trash can was an international hit, selling more than two million units in the first two years of production. The innovative yet low-cost design put the company in the international spotlight and was honoured in 2000 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which placed the Garbo in its permanent collection.

International Success

Umbra continued to grow in the 1990s and 2000s and in 2007 opened their flagship Toronto store, a recognizable building with a flashy pink exterior in the city’s downtown core. The store displays Umbra’s full collection as well as public exhibitions of their design process. Rowan serves as Vice-President of Inspiration and manages the company’s design team. Over the years, he has engineered a collective development process that brings together industrial and graphic designers in a lab environment to conceptualize and execute designs together. Umbra is particularly well known for their signature picture frames, which join several small frames together to display many photos at once, and their Fish Hotel design — a fish bowl that resembles a sleek condominium — was selected by Oprah for her revered “Favourite Things” segment. Today, Umbra sells more than 2,000 products through some 30,000 retails in 120 countries around the world.

Keeping it close

Mandelbaum serves as Umbra’s president and is the company’s principle shareholder. He has pursued a business model that forbids outsiders from holding shares in the company – the company has only four shareholders. According to Mandelbaum, it is this simplified structure that has allowed Umbra to make quick business decisions and approach new markets in a timely fashion without consulting with a large number of shareholders. In 2013, Umbra opened offices in Brazil as the result of a single meeting.

Hiring Young

Rowan and Mandelbaum attribute much of Umbra’s success to the youthful creative team they have carefully cultivated over the years. Rowan often speaks of the company’s “young” aesthetic, and the potential of new designers to innovate. With this in mind, Umbra has partnered with Canadian schools like Carleton University, the Ontario College of Art and Design University, George Brown College and Humber College to offer internships and hold design competitions. They’ve also partnered with The Pratt School of Design in New York to create a competition that offers winning students the opportunity to have their design produced and distributed internationally.

Honours

Best Design Strategy Award at the Design Effectiveness Awards (1998)

1999 - Best Collection Award at the New York Accent on Design Show (1999)

Honourable mention by the City of Toronto Architecture and Urban Design Awards for Umbra’s world headquarters (2000)

Paul Rowan inducted into the Canadian Marketing Hall of Legends as a Visionary (2010)