Home Again

While I was searching out an investment bank to join up with in Singapore I also had a chance to live the life of a permanent Lion-city expat. Thankfully enough, I found that the charm of Singapore wears off very rapidly before I sunk any roots. The daily routine marching to your desk with the rest of the army ants in their subterranean MRT tunnels becomes quite oppressive. The ultra-urban grind simply does not jive with this Idaho boy of wide open spaces.

The life of banking in Singapore is not in the cards for me and after knocking on the door of every merchant bank like an orphan looking for a chimney to sweep, I have come to the conclusion that it's not the time or place for me to be a banker. Apparently, my interviewers have agreed with me. It was fun while it was I was there, but I discovered that I would not be happy so far from home in such a permanent way so I have returned to my old Northwestern US stomping grounds.

So rather than calling this job search a failure, I am considering it an omen. The last 2 months of purgatory has been a necessary limbo for me to float in while I piece together a new vision of what I will be doing in the future.
I have made the decision to launch an import business from the States. It will be called Atlas Frontiers.

Atlas Frontiers

Atlas Frontiers will search out the finest and most unique home decor items from overseas with the intention of wholesaling to local retailers in the Northwest. I will use contacts I have already made in SE Asia to help me source the highest quality hand-crafted home decor and personal items for the young yuppie male demographic.

Guys aged 24 to 35 are increasingly finding themselves as single home-owners and the favorite John Belushi posters and puke-stained 2nd hand sofas from college just won't cut it anymore. Single men who are starting out in their careers are flush with regular paychecks and looking for a way to class up their first working-professional domiciles. Clean-lines, stark colors, and Asian-Euro fusion designs are especially popular, yet hard to find or define in the middle-aged housewife world of home decor. Atlas Frontiers will remedy this gap in the marketplace by offering existing home decor retailers a line of products and sales tools that can capture a segment of the market that has been relegated to the Ikeas, Pottery Barns, and Sharper Images of the world (the same stores your mom and girlfriend are shopping at).

Some will say that men don't shop for housewares for themselves. To this I would say that some would be right if they were making this claim 20 years ago, but today guys are getting married later in life, owning homes at younger ages or at the very least renting more upscale condominiums that require classier bedroom, livingroom, bathroom, and kitchenwares beyond what their former starving college student resources could afford. Younger men are shopping for themselves because it is too embarrassing to entertain clients or have a date over for dinner on the same paper plates and plastic cups used during your university days. When bachelors do buy for their house, they want their decor to be an impressive declaration of their style and success.

Today guys will shop for house and personal items alone, with their girlfriends, their buddies, or others will buy for them in the same stores that their mothers are picking up flower-patterned placemats. The simple fact is that style is not a unisex concept, but it is being retailed that way. Atlas Frontiers will remedy this.

There's my schpeel and the concept will be further developed on the company's website: www.atlasfrontiers.com. Masonfuller.com will stay up for my own personal use, but will not likely be updated as often. The focus of masonfuller.com will not be contained to travel topics and will likely post a variety of topics that are of interest to me at the time. Keep checking out Atlas Frontiers as it develops into a retail channel and company website.