My day is instantly brightened when I discover a new business. The newness fuels my curiosity to learn more about the company’s processes, output, and team. Most companies share similar traits—low-cost production, simple methods, and an independent design outlook. During my design career, I’ve teamed up with furniture ventures that know their stuff but, in their early days of development, the products had an unpolished and work-in-progress feel. Then I found Edits, and it felt like it appeared out of thin air. There was structure and communication so well-crafted that I was sure they had to be backed by a major corporation. To my surprise, Edits is totally independent with no outside investment. How was this possible? Richard Trory is the driving force behind Edits and he’s an incredibly talented engineer who has had experience with design companies such as Design Within Reach, Bensen, and Vitra.
He’s from Vancouver, Canada, and at a certain point in his journey, he felt that he had enough design knowledge to launch the company. Once I spoke with him, he told me of his vision and showed me all the companies he was influenced by, like Magis, Cappellini, Hay, and Muuto. It wasn’t just talk of business strategy, Richard was discussing design and how a modernist viewpoint can be tailored to our current context. Throughout history, design movements have reacted to their predecessors—post-modernism to modernism, and minimalism to post-modernism in terms of product design. However, this era is about rejuvenating classic values instead of reacting to something that once was. We should embrace modernism and mix it with our modern perspective. It is essential to help people recognize quality instead of pushing them away with out of reach prices and low-grade approaches to design.
New Century Modern: promoting a new design movement
Mass production helps make products cheaper for people and to an extent, designers have shaped mass-produced items to be more pleasing with emotional ties. Somewhere along the way, design became associated with elitism and exclusivity with expensive prices and average products being labeled “designer”. Edits is a self-funded company, with care and consideration going into creating new products. It is hard for emerging businesses to launch new products due to the capital and promotional costs; the debut Circus chair has had every detail thought out to the point where it’s difficult to suggest improvements. This is exactly how it should be—we sometimes rush into business strategy and small details get swept under the rug. Designers think of profits rather than people, and it’s down to them to restore genuine substance into design by doing more with less.
Finally, find out more on ArchUp:
Iceland Parliament Hotel: architecture and design in luxury hotels
