by Johan Mengesha (Feb.15, 2007 | AfricanTribune.com)

Delivering solutions to everyday problems is what Ethiopian industrial designer Jomo Tariku, 38, of Springfield, VA. said has been the motto for his company.

Together with his childhood friend, Henock Kebede, 37, Tariku started Jomo Design back in December of 2000. Tariku took care of the creative part and Kebede handled the business aspects of the company. Unofficially, Tariku started making contemporary African furniture, which has become the signature product of the company, in his garage already in 1995. It has since then expanded and diversified into several other things such as web design, creating logos and computer rendering.

"We are a design solution company that happens to have our own line of furniture," Tariku said.

The whole idea of making contemporary African furniture came from Tariku's industrial deign thesis in his fifth year at the University of Kansas. In the thesis, Tariku argued that there is no such thing as a full line of African furniture. There may be different furniture designed by the same designer, but not from the same collection, Tariku said.

Little has changed since Tariku graduated and with the encouragement from Kebede, he started creating African stools, because it is something that is identifiable with Africa.

“We create most of our revenue from graphic design and web design,” Kebede said.

Kebede said by starting this company with Tariku he has learned more about himself than he ever did while working for corporate America. The journeys he has made with his close friend and partner has been an experience, he said. Their company has become successful with a lot of returning clients and Kebede estimates about 80 percent of their clients come through word of mouth.

When it comes to the driving force of the company, Kebede gives the credit to his partner Tariku.

“He is the true entrepreneur to be honest,” Kebede said. “He is a true artist. He is the engine.”

Tariku was born in Kenya to Ethiopian parents, but was raised in Addis Abeba and went to St. Joseph's Academy. He moved to the United States in 1987, but said Africa is still where he gets his inspiration.

"You can never run out of inspiration when it comes to Africa, because nobody is using it," Tariku said.

Some European designers might have experimented by using African inspired themes in their collections, but never created an entire line of African furniture, he said.

While Tariku still loves making his stools, his company has now grown to a more versatile group of people and they dabble in a lot of different things. The most exciting project for the 2007 is an irrigation system that is supposed to save water by 90 percent.

"It will be a revolution for water in the future," Tariku said.

Being a small business owner is not always easy. The financial part of keeping the company afloat and surrounding himself with people who believed in him was the toughest thing in the beginning, Tariku said. The design part came naturally. Besides Kebede, Tariku has two part-time employees and fellow designer Adiskidan "Adis" Ambaye. Tariku met Ambaye through another of his childhood friends, to whom she was married. It was a coincidence that so far has kept them working together for the past four years. Ambaye has a background in cultural design while Tariku is specialized in product design, so she brings something new to the table, Tariku said.

Tariku describes his work as functional art, meaning it is not simply something people would put in their gallery or living room only to look at; it is designed to be used. Jomo Design creates everything associated with the product, which makes them unique as a company. From creating a model on the computer to building the prototype and later the finished product, Tariku and his team does it all themselves.

"Doing it by computer rendering is not a unique thing, many people can do that," Tariku said. "Actually creating it is special."

In the future, Tariku hopes to create products in addition to those he is currently making and brand them, like French designer Philippe Starck has done for Target. He wants to make products people can use and hold on to for a long time, he said.

The industrial design world is quite lonely for a person of African descent and Tariku said he wishes more Africans would get into the field.

"Africans are rarely the designers, just the end users," he said. "There are plenty of African engineers, but I am sure you do not want a product designed by an engineer because it would just be a bunch of buttons everywhere. An industrial designer streamlines everything and makes it usable."

The ultimate goal would be to someday build a design school in Africa. If that is a possibility or if it will just remain a dream is something time will tell, but one thing is for sure, if Tariku will have a hand in it, the school will at least be designed in a functional way.

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.  To learn more about Jomo Design, visit www.jomofurniture.com and www.jomodesign.com.

Johan Mengesha, a contributing writer of the African Tribune, is a graduate of Print Journalism at the California State University, Northridge.