Robert James Olsen

RJO Design Studio Inc.

For the last 25 years I have had a wide variety of industrial and interior design positions. Upon graduating from Parsons School of Design I patented my first furniture design, The Parsons Cube furniture received international exposure and had it selling in Bloomingdales. Moving to Manhattan in 1978 I started designing and building custom cabinets, there with a partner I also started a full service painting and interior design business handling clients all over the city. Later, being interested in larger projects I joined Karco-Davis to do space planning and handled moving the Transit Authorities Engineering Dept from 2 floors of the World Trade Center into a renovated 6 floor building at 40 Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn. Upon complication of that project I worked with Steven Leigh Associates assisting with HVAC, lighting, furniture design and detailing. We did retail space, smaller offices for international companies and exclusive apartments. When Steven Leigh moved his offices I found an interesting job with Signs & Decal developed and designed large Electrical Signage. Starting with one lighting structure at One United Nations Plaza, I went on to work with HRH Constrution to design and manage installation of a 50 Ft lighted ring and lighted Figure Eight in the lower concourse lever of 599 Lexington Ave.

I started RJO Design Studios Inc. designing and builting cabinets for clients on the Upper East Side on 5 Ave, Park Ave and Lexington. During that period I invented, designed and patented my second furniture design the Waterfall Lounge Chair. After prototype testing I started manufacturing the lounge for the Spa industry and also won the Hammacher Schlemmer Personal Care Invention of the Year in 1996. I continued selling my furniture to Spas from California and Colorado to Kentucky and Florida. In Europe while designing a piece of custom furniture, I was offered the sales distributorship of the USA for an English tooling manufacture to the electronics industry. With a partner I built our company Eurotubes USA saleing all over the US Mexico and Canada. Being challenged to either sell out or close down We designed and build a manufacturing plant in East Orange NJ and started selling tooling direct to an exclusive group of fortune 50 companies, Ford, Philips, Siemens, Sony are some. We eventually were direct competitors to Eurotubes . Later I sold my shares to the other partners to focus on smaller interesting interior design projects like combining apartments 6K-L at 350 Bleecker St.so the client could have a direct view of the empire state building.