Beijing Furniture Manufacturer Seeking Importers  

poor
Poor Aalto ...

Poor Aalto indeed....
Poor us to, but most of all poor Chinese people. There must be a better way for them to contribute to their own well being and to the human family than to make ugly copies and sell them to us at low prices.

A design Tiger will rise...
At present we look at most Chinese industry as copy-cats, only because they need to fuel their abundant production capacity. There will be a design gap between design and production volume. But I know given another decade or two, China will pull in many international and home grown designers to craft their own visual vocabulary. Japan, Korea, after WWII, even America between the World Wars met the challenge of creating a design language to meet its growing production capacity. Its a natural momentum. So while Europeans bemoan the copying of their cherised icons, that Asian Tiger will one day rise to rival even Milan, London or Finland.
We either join them in developing quality design, or they crush us with cheap imitations for the next 20 years!!.
Lets chill and see how we can all work together.

Yes, these are undesirable, but...Pt. 1
they are bent-wood and probably at an unbeatable price. I don't know why they didn't either borrow more appealing designs, or hire one of you folks here to do some thing fresh, but they lacked that insight for whatever reason. The keys are: are they put together well and are they cheap? If yes, then they can live to style another day. If not, then they firm dies and they will not last long enough to hire anyone here, or grow their own great designers.
Societies and firms always have to start somewhere when they begin to export to America and excellent, or even good, is rarely where they start. I am not so familiar with the arc of furniture designers entering our market from emerging (or reemerging) economies, as I am with car manufacturers, so I'll use them to make my case.
After WWII, the now beloved 544 Volvo was just an weird, shrunken prewar Ford two door. The first Land Rovers were just Ford Jeeps with the steering wheel in the middle and a different skin to allow it to be sold in right and left hand drive countries without modification. I recall the first BMW Isetta three wheelers brought here, while cute, were absolute crap. Early Volkswagens were reliable, but you couldn't see out the hole-punch back window, they had a heater weaker than warm breath, had trouble breaking 50 in a strong head wind, and could just as easily have been the subject of Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed."

Yes, these are undesirable, but...Pt. 2
And who could forget France's early contributions like the charming Citroen 2CV, which while neatly styled, was not really much faster than a horse drawn cart and sprung almost as badly,or the Renault Dauphine, one of the worst combinations of reliability, looks and utility ever made in large numbers. Of course, the French, much as I love them and their "designs," never really could figure out how to build decent cars for America at a price they could make money on. A Renault Le Car anyone? It performed like a VW Beetle with pointless complexity and no reliability. Even the good cars they sent us, like the Peugeot 504 and 505 were not competitive with anything by the time we got them. And there's the currently invincible Japanese automakers. Early Toyotas, Datsuns and Hondas were grotesquely styled tin boxes, but cheap and reliable. In more recent memory, early Hyundais, from Korea, were one- to two-generation obsolete copies of Japanese econoboxes made under Japanese license. They were unreliable, plain to the point of ugly, noisy, not very roomy, but they had a price low enough to survive, until they figured out how to build something like today's Sonata, which is, frankly, as good as any Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Ford "Mazda" Fusion, etc.
The only two points I'm belaboring here are these: 1) in an America with ever rising poverty, cheap products will have increasing demand; and 2) it is okay to call this outfit's first efforts unpalatable design, but do not doubt that 20 years from now this firm, or one just like it, will then be a dominant player in the middle of the market. And that same firm will be setting up styling studios in New York, LA, and Milan. And they will be taking aim at the top of the market, just as Toyota did when it branded Lexus and shouldered its way in between the scintillating BMW and MB above and the moribund Cadillac and Lincoln below and then began eating away at BMW and MB market share.
It seems to be the way of things. Why they wait so long to hire good desigers and make fine products, I do not know. But that they eventually do is pretty well proven.
And remember, too, the Chinese have a pretty fair design tradition of their own. A Ming vase ain't too shabby.
(Apologies for mastering the obvious of the previous post, but it was posted nearly simultaneously with mine.)

I do not disagree...
with either Jaminriyad nor dcwilson, but the point I wanted to make is a different one. When I refer to "contribution" I expect something more than just catching up or even growing more important. I have no doubts about the fact that they have already good and somne excellent design capability, but that is not the point. What I am looking for is a typical Chinese contribution.
What we have learned, I guess, from cultural exchanges over the past century is that specific cultures contribute to design and to culture in general on a selective basis. Italy might be a design powerhouse but in spite of almost legendary brands like Olivetti, it has never been able to influence dramatically the design culture of computers and other electronic gear, nor have they done well in cameras and other optical products. IBM's Eliott Noyes, a talented designer if there ever was one had, because of IBM's technological advantage, an unique opportunity to influence the "type" shape of the computer and yet his Bubble-like enclosures never did as well as the grey boxes comeing out of germany or being designed by germans in the U.S. (see Hartmut Esslinger and Frogdesign). Basically the globalisation of typeforms of computers was the globalisation of German design in that area...yet at the same time Germans never became very influential in furniture design, Scandinavians on the other hand weer so influential that the only type of modern furniture that did really well in the U.S. was of scandinavian tradition (the Eames', Bertoia, Knoll, Saarinnen etc. all came from Cranbrook, a design school close to Detroit, with at the time almost only scandinavian teachers. Their U.S. contempories outside of that tradition like Dreyfuss, Bell geddes etc. never came close in the furniture field to those other U.S. giants. My point is that globalisation is misunderstood if we think that it creates a kind of global design. What it really has done is that it has created global markets for the expression of specific cultures. I know...sushi in the U.S. and Canada is not the same as sushi in Tokyo and european sushi is different from the two others..but it is still an expression of japanese culture. My question was not, will the chines join the great design family, but what wil be the typical chinese contribution to design. As fort the car history dcwilson, I think that in sketchting it so quickly you overlooked the fact that the way we judge cars is also influenced by our own culture and most Europeans of that generation will tell you that the 2CV Citroen was one of the best cars ever...how many U.S. cars have been on the market with that kind of success, decade after decade...untill the stupid and political opportunistic "Nader" approach to safety turned them into history....

Well and good, Koen
(as they say) -- but what about the curious anonymity of Japanese (auto) design -- the tendency to mimic foreign/western designs in early days (if not with quite the literalness of Volvo !) followed by a carefuly restrained "universality" of styling, apparently designed (as it were) to appeal to. . .everyone (and offend no one) ? Where is the cultural uniqueness, there?
And, could it be a mistake to equate Japanese (and other Asian) with Chinese cultural effects ? While it would seem desirable, I agree, to have their input reflect some unique "take" on the design of objects, can we know if that would happen ?
Or do I mistake your point ?

Thanks for all the comments...
Thanks for all the comments and criticisms.
Agian, I just want to point out that Greenwood Furniture has been satifying our customers for many years by manufacturing products designed by our European, American, and Japanese customers.
The products shown on our website is a general indication of what our factory is capable of manufacturing. Of course, the furniture products shown are our own.
In respect of our customers, we have not included their unique designs in our website.
Thank you,
Andy Tam

Koen Pt. 2
This does not mean that a 2CV was a bad car, or that it was not much beloved. It was a beloved car that was very good car for what it was created for. What it does mean is that no amount of tweaking could ever have made 2CVs competitive with contemporary cars. VW had to drop a bug's exoskeleton on a Golf to make the retro thing work not only cost effectively, but functionally as well. And though most people poo-poo the New Beetle as fake retro, I quite like it as a contemporary car with pleasing, if humble lines and a challenged trunk.
And as an aside, I'll correct myself and add that the French ARE selling cars here these days (and have been for about five or so years now). They're called Nissans. The reason Nissan's look vaguely French these days, while driving positively Japanese, is that Renault bought Nissan and insisted on contemporary styling. So: Nissan is another case in point of how cultural hybridization works in design and products. The current Nissans, especially the delightfully weird proportions of the Nissan Quest minivan, evidences imho a combination of refined French and Japanese sensibilities working in strange concert (with a Spanish designer if I recall correctly) trying to figure out what an uncouth Americain consumer might like that they could lower themselves to make. I mean part of what I find so charming about current Nissans is that they exude the combined eccentricity and arrogance of Japanese and French culture towards American culture defracted through the rationality of cost/benefit and market research.
"Oh, that lucky old sun, its got nothin' ta do/'cept roll around heaven all day." Would that it were the same for all of us and I would no doubt get to dwell on even more of Koen's thoughts and insights which, whether I agree (which I mostly do) or disagree, I find stimulating and enriching.

Koen Pt. 1
Your explanation greatly clarified your intent, which is insightful as usual. Thanks.
Frankly, I think Greenwood's examples are very indicative of one strain of Chinese aesthetic sensibility that I used to encounter when I did work in San Francisco's Chinatown many years ago and when I go into "Chinese" restaurants anywhere from Honolulu to Kalamazoo today. Either of these pieces would look quite familiar to me if I saw them in tourist/retail/modest commercial spaces in Chinatowns from San Francisco, to Toronto, to New York. I haven't travelled to China yet (though we're actually planning one finally), so I can't say whether this aesthetic is much evidenced there. Hard for me to put into words exactly what this aesthetic is, but it feels kind of like a chinese/western hybrid--a bit mongrel-ly, which is not necessarily bad, but is not to appealing to me in this case.
So: I agree with you that cultures put their own spin on aesthetics, but I would add that they do so even when they are aping designs of another country.
Regarding the Deux Cheveaux, I've ridden in them here and in France. I think they are fun, but I sure as hell would not like to commute daily from the 'burbs in North Jersey into Manhattan in winter or from Orange County to LA in summer in a 2CV, even though traffic often creeps n both places; nor would I like to put up with contemporary traffic conditions in Paris (or even Blois) in a 2CV. Traffic accelerates and stops too fast now. But they were elegantly designed for their time. They were so cute that they were clung to long after their relevance expired, like the Ford Tin Lizzies and VW Beetles also. They were aimed mostly for a largely medium to small town and agrarian post war French society with no money, bombed out infrastructure and a desparate need for transportation that burned a minimum of gas. It needed to go 25 miles per hour over cratered, rutted, muddy roads and across snowy, plowed fields. It needed to be able to be fixed with bailing wire and pliers so that it could limp a few miles to the next village when necessary. It needed to be able to be adapted to everything from town delivery use to farm work to going for meat pastry and head cheese. It was wonderfully adaptable, kind of a Swiss Army Knife made of wood, fabric and tin on four black rubberbands from a french indochina plantation. But just as when one sits down for breakfast, lunch and dinner in daily contemporary life, one wants a place setting of flatware to eat with rather than a Swiss Army knife with retractable fork/knife, in contemporary driving I at least would much prefer a new Honda Civic, or a little Peugeot, or one of those delightfully weird little Renault Twingos, than a 2CV.

ITALIANS
And heeeeeere it cones again , the odd role of Italian design....
Is there many Ferrari rivals ?
Is there anything else in the whole world that sounds like an Alfa Romeo ?
And back to the original posting , is there any Aalto copy that "smells" like Artek ?

When I went to Italy...
I ceased being mystified at their skill in design. Just driving in Italy exposes one to an incomparably rich layering of the history of design. If a person can't absorb by osmosis a refined sense of beauty from the dazzling complexity, contradiction, and classical forms and meditteranean primitivism that seems to loom in the golden haze on mountain tops, along lake shores, beside rivers and along bays like an incomparable palimsest of every idea that's ever been tried in architecture and design, then one is as good as dead. If one grows up in southern California, one absorbs car and beach and burger culture whether one wants to or not. When one grows up in Kentucky, one absorbs horses, basketball and bourbon culture, again whether one wants to or hot. When one grows up anywhere, one absorbs what is there. When one grows up in Italy, one absorbs design. I still have never seen as tastefully, dashingly and dignified a man as the one I saw on the promenade in Rapallo with flat brimmed hat, checked cape and a cane shuffling along in the twilight along the Ligurian Sea. Even glorified gear heads like Enzo Ferrari absorb it. The American poet Ezra Pound settled in Rapallo and spent his half crazed life writing the Cantos, a whirling vortex of a poem with Rapallo and environs as its ever present center. What was the Cantos about? Among other things it was a compedium of the beauty that humanity had generated in the midst of its horrendous, vicious folly. It was an attempt to catalogue what was worth saving. Alot of it was Italian sculpture, buildings, paintings, and work by geniuses like Cavalcanti and Dante. Just like New York is big, Italy is beautiful. The question is not why do Italian designers have such flair? The question is how can there be any Italians who lack it? I envy all who grew up there. There sensibilitiies are rarified in a way the rest of us can only dream about.

DC you're right...Italians have that....
Italy is indeed beautiful, only having visited Milan myself, and even though it is a northern urban industrial centre comparable to Detroit or any other industrial park found in North America in their commercial significance. But Milan's comparison ends there, only to surpass the others with centuries of art and culture. Perhaps it is unfair to compare the renaissance's rightful home with industrial North America where industry only took root in the late 19th century, void of any cultural and artistic history.
I think like everyone else, if you enter a botanical garden and let yourself be succumbed by all the visual and aromatic beauty you will wax poetic, so its is with designers. Italy is a living museum of constant reminders to a cultural past that still reverberates in the modern post-industrial information age.
Although cultural surroundings enhance and even promotes great design, a skilled designer should be able to transcend geographical location, it only makes their job harder.

Italy-SCAN
The best work manufactured in Italy in recent years came from Jasper Morisson, The Bourullec brothers, Marcel Wanders ( & Stark (?) )
Thats British French, Dutch.
On they other end of Europe (scandinavia)you can find Italian hand in Scan companies / Antonio Citterio , Vico Magistretti ,Renzo Piano etc
Does the whole Europe communicates in the same design language these days ?