Company Profile: Secto Design Brings Finnish Birch to Your Living Room
Secto Design is known for its simplistic yet playful lamp design. Locally produced but globally loved – that's what the Finnish company is all about.
Secto Design was founded in the early 1990s by Tuula Jusélius. The first products of the company were furniture made of innovative, glue-laminated wood. But there was one problem: customers kept on complaining that they could not find suitable lamps to go with the furniture. There were simply no wooden lamps in the market.
In 1995, Jusélius met Seppo Koho, a newly graduated design architect. It didn't take long for them to find common ground, as both of them appreciate Northern wood, professional woodworking and simplistic, Scandinavian design. It soon became Seppo Koho's task to design the very first lamp for Secto Design. The result was the Secto pendant lamp, which has since become a modern classic of Scandinavian design.
In the early 2000s, the company gave up furniture entirely to turn its focus solely to lamps. Since then, Seppo Koho's drawing board has seen the birth of six different lamp designs – from the familiar, round shapes of Octo to the wildly spiraling Aspiro. All of them are manufactured serially by hand in Secto woodworking factories in the towns of Heinola and Järvenpää. Today, the supply network includes around twenty partner companies and contractors.
Secto Design shades are made of top-quality Finnish birch produced in Central Finland. As ecology is one of the company's priorities, close attention is always paid to recycling and sorting during production of the lamps. Not even sawdust goes to waste, as it is used to make wood pellets for the heating of houses!
Even though the Secto lamps look pretty in pictures, the filtration of light through the wood battens must be experienced in person. This is why fairs have become the most important marketing channel for Secto Design. The building of a comprehensive retailer network and years of hard work have paid off: today, Secto Design lamps can be found all around the globe from Pakistan to Brazil.
The beauty of the Secto lamps has been acknowledged in the United States as well. This summer, the company will be present at several American design fairs: you can meet the staff of Secto Design both at the ICFF fair in New York in May and Dwell on Design in Los Angeles in June.
In the near future, Secto Design will expand its business activities in the U.S. even further. A subsidiary company with a warehouse in Wisconsin has just been founded and will soon be ready to serve American customers. In the meanwhile, you can spot Secto lamps at the One Madison luxury condominium tower in New York – or even get your own from the Museum of Modern Arts store!
More information: http://www.sectodesign.fi(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window)