Remo The Great Curator

Remo Giuffré is a man who curates things, ideas and even people. For many Sydneysiders he is still best known for his eponymous REMO General Store which launched on the corner of Oxford Street and Crown Streets in Sydney in 1988.

Curating Things

It was a store that for many was the epitome of style. A classic emporium that sold a diverse range of ‘things’ from t-shirts to stationery, it was part cafe and part newsagent but what made it special was the collection of very interesting ‘things’ that were available for sale.

As the store became more popular people, all over the world started ordering goods by mail order, and to also get a smartly designed printed catalogue (now highly sought after collectors items) which were the basis of what was new and what was interesting.

The stores closed in the mid 1990s. It was a turbulent time for retail with many iconic brands failing to cope with the recession and global financial crisis. For Remo it was time for a change, and new opportunity, his burning optimism took him to the next challenge.

Connecting & Curating People

In 2001 Remo saw the potential of the internet in connecting like minded people, curating the people who could connect over interesting things. He launched the General Thinking Network an early social network before the world really knew what that meant. The goal was to curate and connect people who were doing interesting work, however the technology was not evolved enough to deliver the experience he envisaged and soon social networks became the digital platforms.

Curating Ideas

The TED mission is to ‘spread ideas, foster community and create impact’. After being a regular attendee at the TED conferences for a number of years. Remo was approached and then took on the opportunity to launch a satellite TED event – TEDxSydney as its founder, director and licensee.

TEDxSydney started in 2010, it is an independently organised event licensed from TED model by Remo Giuffré and put on by the TEDxSydney organising team. The first couple of years were one day events carefully curating 700 attendees, with ideas and performances that aligned to the purpose of TED to promote ideas worth spreading.

There was so much demand that it grew out of its initial hip and urbane location (Carriageworks) and three years later it moved to the iconic Sydney Opera House where it stayed for the next four amazing years. In 2017 it moved again to its new home in the brand new International Convention Centre (ICC).

Over ten years TEDxSydney had grown from 700 attendees to over 5,000. It was a one-day event jam packed with film, music and presentations and as always connecting people with interesting and compelling experiences and stories.

REMORANDOM – Curating Stories

It is now thirty five years on from the launch of the REMO General Store and Remo has a new project it is a series of books called REMORANDOM.

More than just a book, it is a subscription service with the first book launched in October 2023, and the second currently in development and coming in May 2024.

Always an entrepreneur, I spoke to Remo in his North Bondi home about why now is the time for curating stories and why there is so much interest and possibility in REMORANDOM.

“When are you going to realise that your sizzle is your steak?”

So Remo can you talk about what inspired you to write a book or as this is a series of books?

“REMORANDOM is a printed curation of snack size, ideas and observations designed to inform, entertain and inspire a global community of curious readers.”

“So I guess the golden threads were always curation, and communication and community. The store was about curating things, the General Thinking Network about curating people and TEDxSydney was about curating ideas. So REMORANDOM is about curating stories and the joy comes from the randomness of the content, each of the stories are special but random, this my particular kind of curation.”

“People found the idea of the REMO General Store short circuited peoples heads because they could not pigeon hole it. It was part apothecary, part newsagent, there were soft goods, hard goods and stationery, no one could figure it out, they knew it made them feel good but no one could quite figure out why”.

“So this was the chance to write, entertain and show people things that will inspire them, also to make a global network of people. The content (in REMORANDOM) is evergreen, it remains interesting and it is something you can keep coming back to dip into.”

How many REMORANDOMs are you planning to publish, given the first is released and the second is now in production?

“The plan is for twelve books, the colour scheme for the cover of each book has already been planned takes you around the rainbow, there are at least 90 stories in each REMORANDOM so there will be at least a thousand of these Culture McNuggets in the end”.

I can see colour and tagging how does the structure work?

“The structuring and tagging of the stories provides a context. The context helps people navigate, there are eight tags that link the reader to similar content. It is a database of interesting”

Creating content (in this case a book) that remains current and relevant and interesting is a challenge

“Colours Magazine, National Geographic and a number of similar magazines did not date. They stayed in current and in five years from now when someone jumps on the REMORANDOM bandwagon I expect they will be keen to get all of the back catalogue because it will all remain relevant.”

If you go back to look at your REMO General Store catalogues people also collected them because they were beautiful, they were aspirational to a style

“It was my friend (famous American graphic designer) Tibor Kalman who put it bluntly saying ‘Remo when are you going to realise that your sizzle is your steak’. He was saying to me that the narrative or the story about the product was potentially more valuable than the product itself.

Decouple the narrative from the need to sell merchandise, the content of those catalogues was a set of diverse, random, interesting and ultimately a community source set of fun facts, it generated uncommon knowledge.

One of the key points about the REMORANDOM book is that it is in print, I was recently at the South By South West conference (SXSW) where I met a guy and showed him the book, he said oh great its actually ‘in print’ that will fool the algorithm. What he meant was it would expose people to stuff they would not usually see online, in a world where the social media companies and webscale algorithms keep you only seeing what they want. “

I see that there is a QR code on every page that links back to REMO website

“Yes that enables people to use the tags to cross reference but also to connect, comment and engage on the topic in the online REMORANDOM community.

A large part of the appeal of the early days of the TED conferences were that you did not know what to expect in the content of the next talk was going to be, it was just as likely to be a Buddhist Calligrapher as much as a tech person. Randomness cuts through, it engages, inspires and connects.

My wife Melanie and I like to play this game, it’s called the one thing. We walk into a store, it could be hardware or a daggy tourist shop and the goal is who can find the one thing. Because in the right context most stores actually do have one thing that is really interesting and then there is probably also a good story behind it.”

Do you have any places that you would go to today anywhere in the world that has a store able to create that same level of wonder and engagement that The REMO General Store was able to achieve back in 1988?

“The former creative director of Paper Magazine Peter Buchanan-Smith launched a store called ‘Best Made Company‘ it was lifestyle made in America products. His first product was hand made axes but the product development was very smart (Best Made Co closed in October 2020).

Aesop is a great store, the brand is so strong, every store connects with a local architect and now its been able to scale globally but still have a boutique quality feel about it.

In terms of an emporium that delights and inspires you there was once a store in Paris called Collette (gone now) and in Tokyo there is Tokyu Hands.

Have you visited Living Motif in Tokyo?

“Yes they are interesting but they do tend to copy the formula rather than true curation of interesting.

The reason that the cafe in the REMO General Store did so well, was that it was where people who connected with ‘the thing’ came together and saw each other connecting with ‘the thing’ and then connected with each other, over coffee.

What is next for REMORANDOM?

“Step one is to establish this publication and its brand REMORANDOM. Step two is engage the community of readers in gathering ideas for the next issue, because it’s not just the ‘Remo book’ it is a network driven curation. Step three the book uses a tagging paradigm for all of these stories, (culture, design, history, ideas, nature, people, science, things) and connects the community of readers. This brings people together in the content areas they are most interested in.

Wouldn’t it be great to land in some city in the world and to be able to connect with new people who have a common set of interests, this set of ideas becomes the glue and the fabric of REMORANDOM.

Lets talk about your other project the local online magazine Bondi Observer.

“Well it is mostly (my wife) Melanie’s project, but it is going really really well. It doesn’t generate any revenue right now. But it has some really positive feedback, Bondi Observer explores the cultural diversity of Bondi telling the stories of the community. It actually gets a very steady readership, people who subscribe get a newsletter as well as the online magazine.

It has actually been nominated for an award for best new business of the year in the Waverley Council business awards.

Looking back and knowing what you know now what would you do differently?

“I don’t dwell on the past, I think forward about what is going to happen, I have gone broke with the REMO brand three or four times so I need to be resilient. But I think finding my Charlie Munger (close partner to Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway) someone to be my right hand and COO, the yin to my yang. I think I should have been open to that at a younger age, rather than trying to do it alone.

I was given some early advice from one of my Columbia lecturers, who had been a mentor of mine, one of his letter when the store first opened and said “you should beg, borrow, cheat, steal or fornicate before giving up 1% point of your equity”. I think I followed this too closely if I had found the right partner, we might have been more successful at achieving the operational scale.

I have no regrets, if I had achieved more success early (with The REMO General Store) then I might not have had all the amazing opportunities working with TED.

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REMORANDOM is available at good book stores for $40 AUD, but if you subscribe you get two for $72 ($36 each) and you also score some gifts as well as getting to join the community of the CuRRious. REMORANDOM #2 is due May 2024.

LINKS

• https://remosince1988.com/remorandom
• https://remosince1988.com/collections/all
• https://tedxsydney.com
• https://generalthinking.com
• https://bondiobserver.com