We are two White founders, a wife and husband team—Jess and Tim—in the early days of building Companion, a furniture and home brand that creates products and tells stories about objects, people, and the spaces they create. We have an opportunity, from the beginning, to define principles, beliefs, and intentions that will thoughtfully shape our business. We must do better than we have in the past. Design is a communication and storytelling practice. Over the last few weeks, we asked ourselves, “Whose stories will we tell?”
When we curate and share stories to our platform we make choices about what voices we elevate. To date, we have not looked beyond our own creative networks, which are largely White. We can, and will, do better. Moving forward, we commit to sharing stores that are diverse, inclusive, and expand the narrative and dialogue in the design, furniture, and home space. We commit to elevating Black voices.
We asked ourselves, “What story does our team tell?” We are a small team with no full-time employees. To date, we’ve hired and collaborated with freelance designers and creatives who identify as White or Asian. We commit to seek out and hire diverse candidates across race and gender and build an inclusive and diverse team culture.
BIPOC perspectives should be amplified alongside conversations around transparency, sustainability, and corporate and environmental responsibility. We believe you deserve to know what we stand for, where our values lie, and how our actions in life and business represent those values. We shared a list below of a few of the places we’ve pledged to support, as well as some resources we’ve learned something from over the past few weeks.
We have so much to learn and unlearn, and progress to make. We are here for any dialogue or discussion you’d like to have about any and all of the above.