Furninova’s lead designer refuses to compromise.
What is your role at Furninova?
What is your background?
I’m responsible for the design of all of our products, basically in all segments. It is therefore essential that I keep track of the latest trends, not only in the furniture industry. What happens in fashion, film and art are also important. The whole picture is required to make the right choices when it comes to fabrics, leathers, materials and colours. I’m also involved in the concepts we develop for our fairs and shop-in-shop solutions around the world.
I graduated a fashion designer from an institute in Vienna. Here I learned a lot about leather products. Fashion production is actually quite similar to furniture production. When it comes to fashion you think of the sizes: 34, 36, 38... for sofas it is 2, 3 or more seats.
How long have you been at the company? It has been 15 years since I started at Furninova. Before that, I was a furniture designer for a Danish company producing sofas in Vietnam.
What is the best thing about your job? The creating! The process, together with my colleagues, from mind to paper is unbeatable. To see our vision realised and presented at a large fair. And eventually end up in the houses of widely different people: from small apartments to large luxurious villas.
How does the product development cycle look? Everything starts in spring when I gather inspiration for next years collection. During spring/summer, I start sketching on the collection. These ideas are then presented to our team. Many times the initial concepts change during the process to find the optimal means of production. When the whole team is satisfied, we start producing prototypes. At year-end, we present the models on different fairs, and after that, we prepare the model for production. At spring/summer the sofas are available in stores worldwide. It is a long process!
Continues on the next spread
P. 38
