The kings of cute

Fred Flare CEOs (Cuteness Executive Officers) Chris Bick and Keith Carollo

After 10 years of selling carefully curated, tooth-achingly sweet housewares, apparel, jewelry and didn’t-know-I-needed-it-but-I-won’t-sleep-until-it’s-mine ephemera at FredFlare.com, cuteness kings Keith Carollo and Chris Bick are finally taking Fred Flare from online to real-time. (The store's fictitious name refers to a “That’s Entertainment” top hat tipped to Fred Astaire’s Hollywood glitz and glam.)

The first-ever Fred Flare brick-and-mortar boutique is set to open officially in Greenpoint on Oct. 24, meaning those “Juno” hamburger phones, Japanese talking wristwatches, Team Blair (or Team Serena) T-shirts, lace Madonna gloves, bacon bandages and battery-operated hopping plastic lederhosen (with kielbasa-shaped remote control, natch), are just a few G-train stops away.

We caught up with the endlessly ebullient yet ever-humble Fred Flare CEOs (Cuteness Executive Officers) and talked about growing Fred from his humble beginnings—selling coasters off a bike in Soho—to anointing Greenpoint with a fun factory of super kawaii pop delights.

How did Fred Flare first come about?
Bick: Keith and I moved to New York from Chicago about 11 years ago, and we were so completely blown away by all the shopping. I'd never seen Soho before and it totally blew my mind!
Carollo: It was our dream to make something you could find in those great design stores like Moss or Ad Hoc.

What was the first product you ever sold at Fred Flare?
Bick: We created a line of disposable drink coasters inspired by minimalism and Martha Stewart Living—she’d just come out with her paints at Kmart, in those minty, muted colors. We sold them on the back of Keith’s vintage Pee Wee Herman bike in front of the Miu Miu store in Soho. But we're like goody-two shoes from Illinois! We were so afraid of getting busted! That’s why we did it on the bike—so we could get away!

What made you finally decide to open a brick-and-mortar Fred Flare location?
Bick: Ever since we started FredFlare.com, people always asked when we were we opening a store. We’d get "gotta-open-a-store fever" and walk around and look at spaces, but we were always afraid to jump out into the real world. The Internet is hard, but it’s where we started, and we know it. You go to bed, wake up and you made $1,000! It’s so fun! You don’t have to ring people up or chase shoplifters into the street. But we decided to throw our hat over the fence when Fred turned 10 years old.

Where do you find your products?
Carollo: We go to a lot of tradeshows, and we look at a lot of blogs. Thankfully now people send us ideas. I’m really looking forward to that element now with the store.
Bick: Someone walking in like, “I crocheted these snowflake doilies!”

What’s your all-time favorite Fred Flare product?
Carollo: This portable record player from Japan. I just fell in love with it. It got discontinued, but we’ll always sell record players and we’ll always sell stuff from Japan.
Bick: My favorite is the "Risky Business" sunglasses. We’re powered by them! It’s the No. 1 product every single day. It’s literally our paycheck. For holiday, we’re doing [them in] metallics and the Jonas brothers wear those!

What was it like to open a store during this financial crisis?
Bick: There was no turning back once the stock market dropped. We’ve been lucky because we’ve been through a lot of crazy times in the past 10 years. And it’s great being so small—we’re a staff of six, and we keep it in the family; Keith does all of the graphics and copy, and his mom, Anne, up in Michigan, is our financial manager. Plus, most everything we sell is well under $100. But the day the stock market totally dropped, we sold one of our most expensive things! [a $300 gold retainer necklace] We’ve always been drawn to cheap and cheerful—pile it high and watch it fly!

Photo: Melissa Hom