arts&life
design
Taking Flight
Audrey Elkus returns to Detroit
to help TAIT Design Co. soar.
CHRIS HARRISON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
A
TOP: The collectible, easy-to-build TAIT Turbo Flyer is made of balsa —
thicker wood and better aerodynamics than the ones we had as kids.
ABOVE: The Desk Clock is crafted of solid maple with a hand-painted face.
52
October 25 • 2018
jn
s I browsed TAIT Design Co.’s online
store, I found myself amazed at their
level of artistic integrity. The nostal-
gia of
o the Turbo Flyer planes and the beauty
of th
their retro-inspired perpetual calendars
dre
drew me in, but I was also impressed with
the story behind the company itself, par-
tic
ticularly that of co-founder Audrey Elkus.
A native of Bloomfield Hills, Elkus is
no stranger to the world of design. She
po
possessed a love of art from an early age,
th
thanks to family visits to art museums,
an
and her family has run two men’s clothing
sto
stores in the area for generations: Baron’s
W
Wholesale Clothiers in Farmington Hills
and Todd’s Menswear in Royal Oak.
El
Elkus, daughter of Elizabeth and David
Elkus, grew up attending Congregation Shaarey
Zedek in Southfield, where she became a bat mitz-
vah and worked
w
as a madricha (teacher’s assistant)
for the synogogue’s
sy
religious school. After attend-
ing Cran
Cranbrook High School, Elkus graduated from
Wellesley College in 2017 where she studied art,
compute
computer science and economics and was active-
ly involve
involved in Hillel. Beyond her curriculum at
W
ll l she also took business courses at MIT’s
Wellesley,
Sloan School of Management.
After studying at Wellesley, Elkus sought out
career opportunities and found herself drawn to
a company back home in Detroit. “I found this
website, TAITDesignCo.com,” Elkus says. “It
looked like they were making these really cool
products; I loved their mission of making things
locally to showcase Detroit design globally.”
Expecting to meet a large group of designers
and crafters, she was surprised to find the com-
pany solely in the hands of Matthew Tait, the
founder of the company in 2013, and the two
soon began working on the first of many projects
together. “Doing this together was really fun, and
we realized that we make a really great team,”
Elkus says. “We had different strengths that really
complement each other for this kind of business.”
With Elkus now on board as co-founder, TAIT
Design Co. sells to 250 businesses around the
world, from local businesses like NORA and
the Detroit Mercantile Co. to larger entities like
CB2, Restoration Hardware, the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum. Beyond crediting their
products’ success to their strong design aesthetic
that stands out from many other companies,
Elkus also places importance on where and how
they are made.
“[Almost] all of the other goods that are sold
in really cool places like these are made in big
factories overseas,” she explained. “The thing
that makes us unique is that our products are
100-percent USA made, and I’d say 75 percent of
our vendors are here in Detroit. We hire directly
from the College of Creative Studies and Wayne
State to give local design students the opportu-
nity to work with a real design firm and advance
their own craft.”
TAIT has two lines of products: Play (toys)
and Live (homeware). They have an impressive
array of the Turbo Flyer model airplane kits, as
well as Sling-Slang yo-yos and kite kits. In addi-
tion to the perpetual calendars featured in their