Q&A
to come out and meet you.”
And I was so impressed. I said,
“Look, man, whatever you
want to do, I’m going to fund
it. I have a budget. Whatever
you want to do within this
budget, let’s do it.”
I spent a ton of money.
[laughs] I actually ended up
spending three times what the
budget was. But we took it to
[legendary furniture fair Salone
del Mobile in] Milan, and it was
a hit. My wife the whole time
was like, “What are you doing?”
But for me, I just couldn’t stop.
I have to see this all the way
through. I just don’t care. I was
so happy to help this guy.
How’d you get from there to
designing your own stuff?
I went to New York for all
the furniture festivals. I was
looking for new designers, and
I bumped into the president of
Bernhardt Design at a function
at MoMA, and he was in Milan
and saw what I had done with
this guy. He said, “Terry, I want
to do something with you.” In
my mind I was like, OK, let’s
find another designer. He was
like, “No. I did my homework.
I know you are an artist, and
I want you to come up with
your own designs.” And I just
said yes. I didn’t have time to
think it over.
Why do you think they
wanted you for this?
What I realized was that they
were looking for something they
hadn’t seen before. People who
were in that world tended to do
what everyone else was doing.
Whereas I didn’t have that. I lit-
erally was coming off the blank
page, in the blank space.
Still, this was your first try.
When you gave them
your sketches, were you
freaked out at all?
I knew some of them were
gonna suck. I did. I knew the
about doing some more
things artistically. I found him
through LinkedIn, to see what
he was up to. He was getting
his master’s in luxury in Basel,
Switzerland. I said, “I’ve never
been to Switzerland. I’m going
How’d you wind up in the
furniture business, Terry?
It’s amazing what happens
when you just go for things.
I have a friend who studied
design. Ini Archibong. We
would always bump into each
other in Pasadena and talk
art, talk design, the whole
thing. And then we fell out of
contact—I went my way, and
he went his. But once I started
getting a little more success
as an actor, I started thinking
t goes without saying that we’re past the point where we should
be surprised by anything Terry Crews does. The former NFL
player and current actor (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), author, and
rising cultural icon is now in the design business—both as a
patron and an acclaimed furniture designer. In the process, he
has learned a lot about the nature of creativity, the art of managing
creative people, and the exhilarating terror of entrepreneurship.
→ MAN OF MANY TALENTSCrews has mastered a
multitude of worlds bykeeping his mind open and
his ego in check.18 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / January-February 2018