NEWSLINE PAPER,- Tucked away in a colorful, graffiti-filled warehouse in Bushwick is a modest but lively showroom. It radiates innovation with its mid-century modern furniture and calming lavender and bergamot scent. Wearing a blue chore coat, the youthful CEO reflects, "Our motivation was, How could we do things differently?" This area is the embodiment of the ideal DTC startup headquarters, replete with a sincere disruptor.
The products that are being disrupted, however, are human bones; a tooth costs $14, a vertebra costs $50, and a 19th-century skeleton costs $6,600. These items defy convention. An amazing array of spines arranged in an ombré pattern is displayed on one wall, and a Jo Malone diffuser is perched on a display case filled with skulls on the other.
Introducing Jon "Jon Jon" Pichaya Ferry, a 23-year-old who is transforming the bones industry. By offering "responsibly sourced human osteology," his startup, JonsBones, seeks to de-stigmatize a historically spooky field. As a type of nü-goth bones lifestyle influencer, Ferry greets guests at the showroom by appointment only on a warm May afternoon. He wears a skull ring and sterling-silver spinal-cord earrings, both of which can be bought in the "Wearables" section of his stylish website that resembles Warby Parker.
Ferry tells the tale of his voyage while showcasing objects from his collection. At the tender age of thirteen, his father's gift of a yellowed mouse skeleton in a little plastic box sparked his love. "There's nothing more well-designed than the skeletal system," he exclaims. Ferry was reared partially in Indiana and was born in Thailand to a Thai architecture professor mother.
Prior to settling down in New York in 2018 to pursue a degree in product design at Parsons, his hobbies included musical theater and gymnastics. In his dorm room, he first sharpened his talents by articulating animal skeletons for museums and individual collectors. This involved cleaning and arranging bones in their proper anatomical placements. His entrepreneurial venture was financed by the money he made from this project, which allowed him to print business cards and hand them out in Times Square. Subsequently, the crucial time arrived when he came across his initial human skull at Obscura Antiques & Oddities located on Avenue A. He recalls, "I was like, 'Is this legal?'" "And they were like, 'Yeah, it's no problem.'"