Rob Feinstein, Furniture Designer
Asbury Park, 732-749-0843
Three years ago, Rob Feinstein had a eureka moment. He wanted to create furniture that could be assembled without tools. Suddenly it came to him. “I ran downstairs and put it in my sketchbook,” he says. The next day he took his sketch to a heating and ventilation shop around the corner from his Union City architecture office. One day later, he had a metal prototype. Today, Feinstein’s affordable Soapbox line of furniture includes coffee tables, end tables and shelves, all with clean lines and uncomplicated at-home assembly.
Feinstein’s designs, literally boxes, are made up of simple components—planks of hardwood veneers and metal connectors that are easily snapped into place, holding the planks firmly at 90-degree angles. There are long legs and short legs. And that’s pretty much it. Eureka!
Feinstein designed the line with his own set of rules: “No screws, no tools, and it can’t be two pieces to do one thing,” he says. For example, each leg also serves as a corner bracket. That’s why Feinstein hasn’t added cabinet doors yet. “It’s not what it is right now,” he explains.
The line comes in three different wood finishes—maple, cherry and walnut. The brackets are available in black, white, orange, turquoise and green, plus galvanized metal. Individual pieces range from $100 to $450.
Feinstein initally cut and hand-finished each piece in the basement of his architectural firm, Studio One Architects, but he quickly outgrew the space. The business now operates in a double-wide garage behind an auto repair shop in Asbury Park. As business has grown through Internet sales and word-of-mouth, Feinstein, a full-time architect and father of two, has begun outsourcing some of the manufacturing. Still, he stays true to another set of his own rules: Everything is made in America and it must be environmentally friendly. “The plywood is glued together with soy-based glue. The final coat is a hand-polished wax. There are no VOCs,” he says (a reference to volatile organic compounds, some of which are dangerous to human health).
Even with outsourcing, Soapbox is Feinstein’s baby. “I am the shipping department. I am the packing department,” he says. Each box comes with easy-to-follow instructions, the most complicated having just eight steps.
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