Ryan Anderson never meant to become a furniture maker. The son of a successful architect, Anderson was planning to follow in his father’s footsteps, and was studying at the University of Texas’ School of Architecture. But the Great Recession hit a year before his graduation, and jobs in the field were scarce. Even unpaid internships were hard to find. Fortunately, Anderson had learned how to weld while taking a summer studio elective where he had to build from scratch a small house that could be towed on the interstate. He learned to weld the frame of the house out of steel and immediately fell in love with the process.
“I was fully immersed in the need to stick metal together, creating a new three-dimensional object that didn’t exist before, and that would stand the test of time,” Anderson says of his newfound love. “It really got in my blood, and I had a need to make things.”
That new skill also gave Anderson a career path that pulled some of his favorite parts of architecture into a business that would be viable right out of the gate.
“Compared to building a house, creating a piece of furniture can actually happen in a very rapid amount of time. And you know very quickly if that furniture has a value in the marketplace,” Anderson says. “So, I pivoted from following in my father’s footsteps to utilizing my degree and my newfound ability to weld in a different way.”
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Gear Patrol StudiosI was fully immersed in the need to stick metal together, creating a new three-dimensional object that didn’t exist before, and that would stand the test of time.
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Photo by Ty ColeA company that started 14 years ago with Anderson welding one-off steel tables for friends under the name Ryan Anderson Design has evolved into a thriving manufacturing operation that produces custom indoor and outdoor furniture for Fortune 500 brands, local coffee shops and individual clients alike. Along the way, the name changed to RAD Furniture, and the location moved from Austin, Texas, to New York City before finally establishing a base in the Los Angeles community of Frogtown, not far from Anderson’s childhood home in San Diego. Anderson pulls from that childhood often for inspiration as he works with his clients to create custom pieces that will work for the space at hand.
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Gear Patrol Studios“When I was a kid, I would go into a shoe store and create custom sneakers that I could pick up a month later, and I wanted to take that process to the furniture market,” Anderson says. His designs are both functional and striking, but he insists that the end use is the most important part of the process. “We’ve learned that our value is in pulling from the needs of clients, rather than pushing what we want to make onto the market. At the end of the day, the furniture needs to be good. It needs to be durable. It needs to make our clients happy because we depend on that relationship-driven business.”
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Gear Patrol StudiosMore than a decade after starting RAD, Anderson enjoys driving through the community of Frogtown with his children, and seeing the furniture his team made being used at coffee shops, stores and restaurants. Being the founder of a thriving furniture company might not be exactly what Anderson had in mind when he enrolled in architecture school at the University of Texas, but he couldn’t be happier with the end result.
“Furniture doesn’t always get noticed, but I play a part in making a finished good,” Anderson says. “I’m very serious about going home at the end of the day, and being able to say, ‘I did X, Y and Z today.’ And I sleep well knowing I did those things.”
Gear Patrol StudiosMettle Work, created in partnership with GMC, is a series about professionals and their commitment to craft. Check out part two, featuring glass artist Cedric Mitchell, here.