Slow furniture production "not affordable anymore" says Sebastian Wrong
Furniture brands need to be ready to sell designs immediately after revealing them if they want stay afloat in today's market, according to Sebastian Wrong, design director of Established & Sons.
"The days of showing an idea in Milan and then putting it into production a year, or sometimes even longer, afterwards is just not affordable anymore," Wrong told Dezeen at the launch of Established & Sons' latest collection.
"You just haven't got that luxury of time," he said. "The market moves so fast – as soon as you present an idea, you have to run with it, get it out there and start trading on it."
Wrong just unveiled his first collection since rejoining the brand following a five-year hiatus. It includes products by designers including Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and Konstantin Grcic, all set to debut at the Salone del Mobile fair in Milan next month.
Speaking to Dezeen during a press preview in London, Wrong said that the market had completely transformed in recent years and that customers easily now lose interest in products they can't buy right away.
"The immediacy of it has actually changed massively in the last five years," he said.
As a result, Wrong aimed to make every product in the new Established & Sons range "accessible, competitively priced and ready to go straight away".
"We will have stock in Milan, we are ready to take orders and we can tell customers when they're getting their product. That's a guarantee," he said.
"Last time I was with Established, I was pretty much presenting concepts and ideas, some formed more than others," he added. "But everything we've got in this collection has been very carefully benchmarked, developed, tested. It's been very thorough."
Wrong originally founded Established & Sons in 2005, along with Angad Paul, Mark Holmes, Alasdhair Willis and Tamara Caspersz.
When Wrong left in 2012, Paul became the only founding partner remaining. But following Paul's death in 2015, the company was taken over by a new team of directors: Vincent Frey from Parisian design house Pierre Frey, management consultant Patrick Mueller-Hermann, and investment partner Ramzi Wakim.
It was announced that Wrong would return as design director in 2017. He said one of his main aims going forward is to keep the brand relevant, particularly in relation to new digital forms of communication.
"Nowadays you don't need to just gear things up to one event, you can present ideas digitally, and the channels of trade are much more accessible," he added. "It's just a case of growing. Onwards and upwards!"