This has been a jubilee year for us – we have celebrated our 30th birthday. And it was really eventful. We have presented a few new products, participated in interesting events in the Czech Republic as well as abroad and took further steps towards more sustainable production and our chairs have won prestigious awards. You can now look back at all those moments with us.
New products in our portfolio
This year was abundant in new products. In March, a new model 033, with an upholstered foam shell was added to our WAVE series of versatile chairs. As early as in April, it was followed by two other new products: the EVO conference chair series and the revolutionary FOLLOWME task chair. Both series were designed by Andreas Krob. In June we presented the ARCUS task chair, designed by Martin Ballendat, for the first time. And we did not take it easy in summer either: a versatile chair, ZOE, was added to our range of products. This year’s last new product of ours was the NIDO modular seating system, introduced in October and designed for us by Orlandini Design, Italy.
We have exhibited our products both in the Czech Republic and abroad
In May we travelled to London, where we exhibited our products at the Clerkenwell Design Week festival. As usual, in October we participated in the Designblok international trade fair, which takes place annually in Prague. At Designblok we presented our exposition Development = Journey, designed by Václav Mlynář and Monument Office.
In November we hosted a gathering of the members of the Association of Czech Industrial Design. The gathering included a tour of our production facilities, so the Association members had an opportunity to see the “behind-the-scenes” of our work. At the members meeting in our showroom we discussed many important topics and a lot of interesting suggestions, whose threads we will definitely pick up in the future.
Our chairs won prestigious awards
We are really happy that our new products caught the interest of users as well as design experts. The ARCUS office chair won two prestigious awards: The Red Dot Design Award in the Office Design & Equipment category and the German Design Award in the Excellent Product Design – Office Furniture category.
Also successful was the FOLLOWME office chair, which won Special Mention in the Excellent Product Design – Office Furniture category within the German Design Award.
We took further steps towards more sustainable production
We are continuing our mission of achieving as sustainable and environment-friendly production as possible. This year we installed photovoltaic panels on the roofs of our production facilities and as a result we are able not only to cover our own power consumption but also to sell the surplus electricity produced.
We are also proud of getting an FSC® C184700 certificate for the wood that we use to produce, for example, our TRIVI series.
Our standard range of products now also includes new sustainable fabrics, the Steelcut Trio 3 woollen fabric and the Cork fabric.
A little taste of our plans for 2024
We are already looking forward to what the next year will bring. We have a lot of plans. For example, we want to put our new PUR seating production facility, which we built this year, into operation.
As regards our planned new products, we can mention the conference models of the ARCUS, which will be added to the office chair of the same series, or new LOTUS conference chairs with a wooden shell. All of these chairs have been designed by Martin Ballendat.
We are also looking forward to taking part in different exhibition events. Like this year, we are planning to exhibit our products at the Clerkenwell Design Week in London and at the Designblok International Trade Fair in Prague. And Cologne, Germany, will again be hosting the Orgatec International Trade Fair after two years. We will be there!
Last but not least, we would like to thank all our colleagues, business partners and customers for their great support this year. We are looking forward to working with you next year again. We couldn’t manage without you!