By focusing on one great product and great customer service, Vitsoe has transformed its fortunes from near ruin to strong annual sales – 25 per cent of which are exports.
Sustainability is the key. The product, which has been around for more than 40 years, will last a lifetime and can change as customers needs change. That sustainability is also reflected in the fact that all Vitsoe’s packaging is recyclable.
The company now has its own West End retail outlet that opened in Wigmore Street in 2004, and is also represented in the well-known Moss furniture store in New York. There are also stockists in Finland, Ireland and France and more are expected to follow.
Adams says that the next big challenge is to persuade more customers that buying an £800 shelving unit from Vitsoe is more cost effective than buying one for £150 which will fall apart in a couple of years. ‘It’s about getting them to believe in the idea that this will last a lifetime.’
Vitsoe has recently reissued a Chair 620 – also designed by Rams in the 1960s. It uses the same thinking as the Vitsoe shelving system as Adams explains: ‘You can take a chair, take off the arm and bolt it to another one to form a two seater or multiple seater sofa and the upholstery comes off so it can be replaced when it is worn out.’ Adamant that the launch of Chair 620 does not run contrary to Vitsoe’s philosophy of doing one thing really well, Adams explains that ‘this is not the first in a long line of new products: it’s simply a reissue of a classic design.’
And like the 606 Shelving System, it remains that rarest of things, a design icon you can still buy and use every day, now and in the future.
