Jamie Meighan opened her new furniture business, Kate Madison Home Furnishings Inc., this summer. The showroom is on the dining-room table in her Melrose Street home. Or in California. Or New York. Or Australia.
Anywhere anyone can reach the Website: http://www.KateMadison.com

Barely two months old, the business has already racked up orders from as far away as California.

"We're looking for a showroom people can come and visit somewhere near Melrose," said Meighan, who began the furniture business with her business partner, Jeffery O'Brien. He holds the creative director title. Meighan, 32, is president.
The real-life showroom isn't a priority at this point because Meighan plans to make the Web presence the main retail outlet for her line of sturdy and stolid country French furniture.

"The Web is important because people anywhere in the world can reach you. With an actual showroom, you're limited to the market that can come and drive to your location."

The Web also allows Meighan to achieve her main objective: provide custom-ordered furniture, constructed using traditional materials and joinery, but meeting modern needs, all at a price equal to or less than a retail Route 1 showroom - a full armoire or six-drawer dresser sells for $1,250, an occasional table for $295, a ladder-back chair for $250.

The high-tech marketing approach may seem like an oddity for a company selling a furniture style first made popular in the mid 19th Century. The contrast is only one of many. The entire Kate Madison line represents a blend of tradition and the newest technology.

The company takes its name from Meighan's grandmother.

Meighan, by contrast, has spent most of her career in the dot-com world. She's worked in the creative and marketing divisions of such companies as Time Inc., Sapient and AltaVista. She grew up in a retailing family and developed an eye for antiques. "This seemed like a great opportunity to combine my dot-com experience with my love of antiques and my knowledge of retail," explained Meighan.

The furniture itself, made in a single 19-person cabinet/furniture shop in Quebec, Canada, uses traditional construction methods and materials. The shop uses only white pine native to the area. Some of it is newly milled. Special orders will use old boards salvaged mostly from abandoned hunting cabins and similar buildings.

The shop builds the furniture using techniques common to the original country French period. The joints holding the furniture together are traditional, single-dovetails and mortise and tenon. No staples. Ever.

The pieces are all of solid pine - a door is about 1" thick and drawers use boards from 1/2" to 3/4" thick. The line contains no particleboard. No fiberboard. These manufactured wood products combining glues and various sized wood flakes, chips or sawdust often make up parts of modern furniture.

The Kate Madison pieces may eschew modern manufacture and look traditional on the outside. The inside may be quite a different story. Open up an armoire and instead of clothes it's likely to house an entertainment center, with shelves for a TV and DVD player or VCR.

Another armoire opens into a home office, with space for a computer and a keyboard tray. Closed, the piece fits into a dining room, living room, bed room or den. Open, it's ready for a modern-day round of homework or catching up on sales reports or legal briefs.

"It's a furniture line that looks antique, but meets modern needs," said Meighan.

Customers can order a natural finish, but most of the Madison line is finished with milk paint. Standard colors are black, white, red and sage, though customers can order their own colors as well. Milk paint, a finish that dates back to ancient Egypt and was used in Colonial America, combines milk protein, quicklime and earth pigments.

"A Kate Madison piece can be a focal point of a room. A lot of people design their homes to have a neutral color palette. We see people wanting to by a focal point piece - a red or a black - that will make a visual impact on the room."

To emphasize the traditional look, all pieces come with a distressed finish. That is, some of the paint round a drawer pull, or corner, will deliberately be worn away. A table top may have dents designed right into it. This gives the piece worn, warm feel that fits into a lived in home, even as the color livens up the room.

"It's an antique reproduction, to a degree," said Meighan. "It will work in an older home as well as a new home. It has a character. It has a nicer lived-in look. Like it's something from the past even though it has a contemporary feel. It can work with antiques or with new furniture. But, it doesn't have that crisp, veneered look. It works well in an older home with wood floors."

The Butterfly table, a plank table using boards up to 24" wide, also comes with a purposely dinged top. The top sits on turned legs, with some of the paint worn at the square, block leg tops.

Overall, the 50 pieces in currently in the Madison line, convey a sense of permanence and heft. The 90-degree angles, raised panel doors and drawers, turned wood pulls, and crown moldings on the larger pieces such as the armoires and cupboards seem to say, "Move me, I dare you." This is definitely not on-the-go furniture.
That's part its appeal, said Meighan.

"The furniture works with so many styles, because it has simple lines," said Meighan. "It can work with a modern home. A country home. Or a renovated Colonial. People are looking for a traditional look, but they may not want to pay for an antique or they need a piece that will meet their modern needs. A lot of people are thinking creatively. We had one client inquire about creating a kitchen using two, step-back cupboards and setting the sink into a buffet. The line gives people a chance to work their own needs into a traditional look."

Meighan can speak so authoritatively about furniture because she's been in the business since age 10. Her mother owned a children's furniture shop. "I helped out working with customers, doing displays, working on promotions," she said.
In college, Meighan earned a degree in journalism and graphic design. "From there, I launched into careers using words and visuals and that translated to the Web easily. The Web allows you to be more interactive about how you think about design or any kind of project. It's an incredible vehicle. From Indiana or Atlanta, I've already dealt with all different kinds of people from all over the country, people you'd never be able to access with a local business."