Chair light and easy to repair

By SIMON COLLINS

Making things to last can be expensive, but Lower Hutt's Formway Furniture has found that it can also be a boost to worldwide sales for Kiwi products.

A year ago the company launched its "Life chair", one of the first New Zealand-made goods that was specially designed so that it could be changed easily to meet shifting fashions or needs, rather than thrown out.

One year on, it has sold 40,000 Life chairs, mainly in North America where it struck a manufacturing and marketing deal with a big furniture maker, Knoll International. Design director Mark Pennington says the chair, primarily for office use, was based on the three principles of sustainability: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Materials were trimmed back to a minimum, 23 per cent and 65 per cent lighter than its two main competitors. "In design terms, it means you pare down the design to the absolute essence. We are always looking to reduce and minimise, and yet produce high performance products," he says.

The main structure of the chair is made from largely recycled aluminium. The seat and arms are mainly nylon and polypropylene. There are no fancy powder coatings on the metal that would tend to rub off and lead to premature obsolescence. The parts all fit together with designed fits, clips and pins rather than the usual glue, so that each part can be easily taken out and replaced.

"All the components that may date with fashion or wear, or could be refurbished over the short to medium term, can be addressed simply by users or a technician," Mr Pennington says. "Upholstery or any other elements that could wear or become soiled can very easily be repaired and replaced."

The chair was designed with help of "eco-design" at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. It has a 10-year warranty.