An Interview With Joseph Yencho of RCKSinks on The New Reality Sink.

Jim Murray, Blogger and Communications Specialist, sat down with his client Joseph Yencho, CEO of RCKSinks and creator of the Reality Sink for a reality check.

OK, Joseph. When we first started talking more than a year ago, you basically had an idea and rendering of the idea for the Reality Sink. Tell me about how this all came about.

The idea for the Reality Sink is pretty much a direct result of my 20 years in the kitchen build business. It sort of took hold of me a few years ago when I was doing a couple of renovations and went back after they were complete to take some pictures.

What I saw was this beautiful kitchen design that wasn’t cheap. It was all first class and there on the counter beside the sink, it sat like a festering sore. In one house it was the ugly plastic dish rack. In another house it was an old tea towel with couple of coffee mugs and a bit of silverware drying out on it.
In a way, it made me sad because it just ruined the look of the space.
That was when it occurred to me. Kitchen design had become this world gone mad…with $40,000 appliance packages, $30,000 for custom cabinetry, $15,000 for countertop installs, $5,000 custom lighting packages, the finest French cookware and the Achilles' Heel of it all was the ugly plastic dish rack or tea towel drying all the stuff you don’t want to put in the dishwasher.

So tell me about the Reality Sink. What was the thinking that went into it? e

Well it happened in stages. First I thought, man, we really have to get rid of that dish rack somehow. It was time to get real about this. So I started looking at sinks. There are literally thousands of sink designs out there. But no matter which design you choose, the Achilles' Heel is still the same.
So I just asked myself a simple question. How can we create a different kind of sink that solves this problem? I had a rough idea of how to do this in my head.
After that, a lot of the thinking went into just how we could pull it off.  It became a real design challenge. I talked to a lot of people. Got a lot of opinions. Some from people who thought I was crazy for rocking the boat. Others who thought, maybe there is something to that idea.
And that’s really what you see here. It’s basically a square sink with an extended sunken drying area it. Its drains well and even when it’s loaded with stuff, and because the rack is so beautifully integrated into the overall design the feeling of countertop clutter is almost non-existent.

How has The Reality Sink been received so far?

I honestly can’t complain. My first stop was at a company called Asil Krom, which is one of the largest sink distributors in the world. It took a while, but we came to terms and they are representing us everywhere in the world except Great Britain and the U.S. So that’s terrific.
One of the real benefits of dealing with ASIL-Krom is that they were able to take the original design and improve on it even more, giving it a bit more elegance and a lower production cost.
ASIL-Krom loves the product and they are building a solid distribution network for it in Canada and dozens of other countries.
I know you are trying to figure out the export market for the sink in Britain, but you’re building your own network in the US, so how is that going?
We have a number of different vertical silos in which we can market the sink. But as far as targets go, we basically have three. The showrooms in the kitchen and bath stores, lumber yards and big box stores; the interior designers, both for homes and larger applications like hospitals, schools, managed care facilities hotels, condos…etc. And of course the individual customer.
The showroom people love it. It’s really a one-of-a-kind product and a great draw for them. So they are doing a lot to help us create customer demand.

What about the designers?

Well that’s a whole other story. You sometimes talk to me about your 80/20 Rule. Well in this case, 20% of the designers get it, love it, want to incorporate it and, over time, we will do OK with them.
But it’s the 80% that are my biggest challenge. When I was building kitchens, I would notice that a lot of the designers I worked with had a pretty finite number of solutions that they employed, only really varying them a little around color schemes, materials and available space.
These people look at the sink and they get it. They smile. The nod. They tell me nice things. But I somehow get the feeling that this is taking them out of their comfort zone somehow. And as much as they admire the design, the practicality and the ability of the sink to fit beautifully into any number of design formats, they just can’t seem to turn that corner in their heads.

What’s the solution to that?

Well, I think you just have to keep showing them situations where it’s been integrated into various levels of kitchen design and tell them stories about how much the people who have a Reality Sink in their kitchen really love it.
In a nutshell, we just have to keep hitting them over the head with it until they start to see that that its practically has a beauty and elegance all its own.
Most of these folks are pretty creative and they have a customer first attitude, so we also need to leverage customer demand to influence them, which means creating demand through the showrooms to reach that customer base will be key.
We also need to start bringing the Reality Sink to more consumer shows, where we can expose it to people who are actually shopping for stuff for their homes.
It’s not an insurmountable challenge. Just a big one. And it will take some time.

So you’re feeling optimistic about the future of the Reality Sink.

Very much so. I have poured a lot of blood sweat and tears into it. We’re going to build it into a solid brand. And one by one, we’re going to reach out and get known in all the potential markets we have for it. We have good partners in ASIL-Krom, great manufacturing, and smart marketing and branding people to help us along the way.
This is something that’s been a dream of mine for a long time. We’re going to make it happen. And not just because I’m a stubborn SOB. It’s because I am totally convinced that this product has a real place in the design build market.
The product itself is the ideal combination of sustainable design, excellent construction and functionality, with an understated elegance and the ability to be a key part of a wide range of kitchen design solutions.
We just have to keep showing it to people and let it sell itself. Because it does a really good job of that.

Contact: Joseph Yencho, CEO, RCKsinks IncJoseph@Rcksinks.com • PH: 860-529-0770

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