Actually, 2007 is way more than the year of the rabbit for the Minnesota-based Kaldun & Bogle. This is the year that the four-year-old brand aggressively mobilizes with a number of ambitious marketing programs and stepped up product development. And while Kaldun & Bogle indeed sports a bounty of bodacious bunnies, it is also well represented with a barnyard of designs and seasonal decorative accessories. Kaldun & Bogle is the brainchild of longtime industry designer Stevens Vaughn and his partner Rodney Cone, who for the past decade have developed private label merchandise for a string of retailers across the country. Buoyed by lasting relationships with Asian factories, Vaughn and Cone decided to launch Kaldun & Bogle (the moniker reflects maternal family names) in 2003 focusing on respective strengths in design and marketing. Vaughn has a quarter-century of experience on both the retail and wholesale side (including V.P. of product development for Fitz & Floyd), and Cone, a Wharton MBA, has a business savvy that has propelled Vaughn’s designs into a rapidly growing enterprise. It’s a symbiotic partnering, professionally and personally, which has created great success for their private label operation. “We’ve done very well working with major customers over the past ten years, but we felt the need to grow in new directions,” says Vaughn. “Kaldun & Bogle will be our window for that growth.”

Vaughn is continually opening windows in his life. Contagiously curious, compassionate, creative, and completely unique, Vaughn’s utter dedication to developing products that enrich peoples’ lives is extraordinary. This man truly believes that dishes can change the world. “My work in this industry will, hopefully, lead people to eat together, serve each other, and feel the spirit that comes with sharing food and company,” Vaughn effuses. “Mine is a life fueled by a passion for everything involved in the creation and serving of food.”

In an effort to brighten as many lives as possible with an assortment of decorative accessories steeped in Asian and Italian influences, Vaughn and Cone have plunged whole hog (a fitting reference for these erstwhile farm boys) into their new endeavor. “We’ve worked directly on the frontline with first-tier factories,” Cone says. “We’ve been a straightforward supplier of good product that sells for our stores, so we thought the time was right to put our name on product that was made for a broader market.” That business, Lily Creek, has more than 100 employees around the globe, offices in Manila, Hong Kong, China, and Minnesota, and sales virtually doubling one year to the next. Still, Vaughn notes, “It was time to rethink and rebirth the business, becoming aggressive in the marketplace again and finding new joys.”

While Cone and Vaughn make their home on a small island in the South China Sea, their frequent flier account has grown fat hopping between Asian factories and crossing the Pacific to the states, particularly as the burgeoning Kaldun & Bogle brand has taken shape. “Part of Kaldun & Bogle’s design direction comes from when I worked in Italy,” says Vaughn. “I was very impressed that Italians are more concerned with the spirit in which a product is created. They sculpt with the knowledge of where the final product will be used and the prominence it will play in people’s lives. They paint the ceramics fast and with passion. They like to say their technique is easy on the eyes and the more you look at it, the more you love it. I’ll be in a Chinese factory where craftsmen are stressing over the lack of precision in which pumpkins are being painted so I’ll grab the bisque, dip it in a bucket of water, and paint with a big brush in giant strokes adding to the product a bit of my spirit.”

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