Philadelphia creative, Steve Grasse, is always up to something big. It’s just the way the guy works.
His latest BIG IDEA entails moving to the country and making things with his hands. “The go-go excesses of the millennium is over,” Grasse said. “Now America needs to get back to fundamentals–hard work, brilliant inventions, and the manufacture of useful things.”
Grasse has purchased a 72-acre farm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire that he plans to use as a laboratory for America’s new culture of agrarian traditionalism.”We spent twenty years celebrating the wild decadence of American consumerism” Grasse said. “The time has come to begin a new chapter.”
He’s also decided to rebrand his ad agency, Gyro Worldwide. As of today, Gyro Worldwide is no more. In its place is Quaker City Mercantile (QCM), a company that aims to produce much more than advertising. Drawing on Philadelphia’s heritage, QCM hopes to recapture Philadelphia’s mighty industrial past and weave a new version of this greatness into its future.
QCM will operate out of the old offices of Gyro Worldwide. It will offer clients the same array of branding, identity, promotion, and new product development services. But in addition to creating work for other companies, QCM will be developing its own line of artisanal products, many developed on Grasse’s farm. “I aspire to be a true Renaissance man,” Grasse says, “a pre-robber baron capitalist in the tradition of Franklin, Jefferson and Washington.”