Fogia is a Swedish company that offers well thought-out furniture for private homes and public spaces around the world. Working with renowned interior designers and architects, Fogia delivers furniture and customized solutions for hotels, offices, schools, conference centers and restaurants. Today, ICFF announced that the company had won the Editors’ Award for Best Furniture 2018. A+A recently interviewed Fogia’s Marcus Huber via email:
Background and history of the company?
The company was founded in 1981, in Stockholm. We started with Plexiglas and glass tables and shelves under the name Combiplex. Some years later, other types of furniture were added to the collection, like chairs, sofas and armchairs. It was one of the leading furniture brands in Sweden during the 90’s, and had a sleeping period during early 2000, until a friend and I bought Fogia in 2011 from the founder. We have since then worked hard to revitalize the whole company, starting out with an ambitious whole new product collection, with room for the best of the older collections. Now Fogia is again one of, if not the leading Swedish furniture brands, with great success in Sweden but recently in a number of other countries around the world.
How do you select its designers?
I believe putting heart and energy into whatever you do is what leads to results, and if that is going to work out in the design process we need to work with people who are willing to do the same. So we very closely work with a rather small number of designers and therefore they play an extremely important role in how we develop our collection. We look for designers with strong ambition, who are brilliant as designers but also passionate about being part of this journey that Fogia undertakes. Most of them are Scandinavian, but they work with companies around the world and have a lot of international experience and a global mindset. That is important since Fogia is targeting the global market.
What do these products have in common?
They have international elegance, they’re true to our Scandinavian origin, with high quality, outstanding feeling (comfort, a gentle touch and tactility), and they’re manufactured with the best craftsmanship
Materials?
We produce most of the furniture in our own factory. There, we work a lot with solid wood oak and ash, but also walnut. For the base material we use birch that we buy as whole trees and then saw in our own timber mill. Then we let it dry to become ready to use to build the bases for sofas and armchairs. We do all of this in order to control the whole process and hence the quality of the end product.
We also work a lot with metal, for frames and legs but also for construction when needed. And then, since a large part of our collection is upholstery products, we work with some of the best fabrics and leathers.
Intent of the product lines?
We strive to make furniture with an international elegance, but still true to our Scandinavian origin. We do not create borders between the home and different professional environments, since we don’t believe they exist. You want to create a feeling, based on functional needs, no matter the environment. If you are an architect you should be able to create a warm, homey feeling in an office using Fogia’s furniture, but still be sure that they meet the demands of a contract environment. On the other hand, as a consumer you should know that you have selected a piece of furniture that would withstand the hardships of a hotel use, but still with the desirable design of a consumer product.
For more, go here.
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