Network of Design CEO Therese Hillman discusses the advantages of building a community of design brands. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is Monocle on Design Extra.
It's a short show to accompany our weekly program where we discuss everything from architecture and craft to furniture and fashion.
I'm Ailee Evans.
Network of Design is a group of nine design companies that was formed in 2020 with the aim of making Scandinavian design more visible across the world.
The group consists of both heritage brands such as Kastal, a Swedish artisanal rug maker founded in 1889, and furniture brand String, known for its shelving.
This is as well as emerging brands like Finnish furniture and lighting company Vani.
Monacool's Helsinki correspondent, Petri Birzoff met up with the group's CEO Therese Hillman and began by asking her about the advantages of building a community of design brands.
We identified that there are in the Nordics very, very great companies.
And we also saw that they are pretty much at the same size and they are smaller, up to mid sized company.
And when we say small, we start at, you know, turnover around 1 million euros and then maybe up to 5 million euros.
And most of the companies, they were at that size.
They were known internationally, but they were not that known.
And we believe that it's going to be difficult for them to take the next step and grow by themselves.
But if we can pool resources and we can help them and if we can also have different expertise that we combine, we might be able to lift them.
So that was the original idea and then we started to discuss this with companies that had grown like String Furniture.
That is one of our largest companies.
We looked into what did they do and the growth formula that's behind their.
I think they have had an amazing development since start and could we do this with other brands?
And I think we all agreed when we discussed this at the beginning on, you know, owner level, board level and management level, like this is something we could do.
So it's pretty much getting what they did to their brand and lift other brands.