WALDEN, 2021

The world doesn’t stop spinning, so we made a place to sit. Co-founded with Eddie Cohen, we launched during the pandemic in 2021. Over the course of three years we designed thirty-five products and moved hundreds of thousands of units around the world.

Eddie and I met on the internet in 2018. Together we designed the Original Meditation Cushion. This was the beginning of the world we would end up building at Walden.

Walden was built with meditation as the nucleus of the brand and product strategy. The roadmap intended to be a series of concentric circles surrounding the practice with coinciding product categories. The farther away the products were from the center, the more the explicit the tone and messaging became about mindfulness. This helped us define our voice in a product landscape of commodity items, and bring a fresh take on some of the most simple objects.

THE MEDITATION CUSHION

The Original Meditation Cushion was the first product we launched with. It's a modern take on a traditional zafu. Our innovation came from adding a thin layer of memory foam on top for added comfort. We used elastic webbing around the cushion to create a hidden handle and a recognizable icon. The first material we used was designed by Maharam. It is a polymer based upholstery fabric that can withstand living on the floor and is easily cleaned by wiping it down. Since the original, the cushion has been upholstered in a range of other materials that consider different environments and textures.

VISUAL FRAMEWORK

Walden’s creative direction was grounded in a single idea, explored through three distinct worlds. The first was the exterior world, rooted in nature, landscapes, and the rhythms of the environment around us.

The second was the interior or built world, including the homes, spaces, and architectural environments where rituals take place.

And the third was the inner world, the psyche and subconscious, a more abstract space where we could explore surreal, dreamlike, and even psychedelic imagery.

Together, these three lenses helped shape a brand that felt grounded, familiar, and expansive all at once, much like Thoreau’s Walden, which blurred the lines between the natural, domestic, and interior life in pursuit of a more intentional way of being.

STUDIO & SUPPLY CHAIN

With Eddie leading supply chain and sales and me focused on design and production, Walden was built to be as vertically integrated as possible. We ran day-to-day operations out of our own studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and shortly after moving in, converted one of the floors into a fully functional warehouse and distribution center. It let us handle everything. From receiving inventory to packing and shipping orders, all under one roof. For a small team, this operational setup in-house was critical. It gave us control, speed, and a way to scale without relying on third parties.