“I just couldn’t find anything,” says John Christakos, a sculptor and MBA, of his erstwhile furniture woes. “So I always found myself building my own stuff.”

That is until with college chums Maurice Blanks and Charlie Lazor, who are both architects, in 1994 he launched a furniture business with a contemporary flair called Blu Dot (“It lent itself to a good logo,” he admits of the name), whose accessories are practically ready to use when unpacked from their distinctive flat, perforated boxes (or hung on the wall as two-dimensional art). And its ready-to-assemble furniture is now sold in stories nationwide and around the world (including Germany, France and the UK) and was also featured on TV on ER and Joey and Chandler’s apartment in Friends.

“A lot of time we are the affordable choice in a high-end design store,” says Christakos, speaking from company headquarters in Minneapolis, where he moved to get a job and stayed to build furniture. “So if somebody comes in and gets cold feet about the price of an Italian or German imported piece, they bring them over to Blu Dot.”

The company’s line of products is made of material as varied as tubular steel, sandblasted glass and Baltic birch. And since previewing its first line in New York in 1997, Blu Dot has numerous awards including.