Within the design industry, where superior materials and expert craftsmanship are crucial to success, cutting costs is all the more difficult. Naturally, certain designs are simpler to produce than others; some products require less labor, or cheaper materials. The material nuance of design production and the repercussions of its inevitable costs raise an interesting question: what is at the heart of a creative start-up?
Production as passion
Trained as an architect, Magnús Freyr Gíslason finished his studies in Reykjavík and made the decision to move back to his hometown of Sauðárkrókur after a stint working in a woodshop without adequate pay. With his heart firmly set on woodworking, Magnús started Gagn, a family-owned furniture design company whose ethos is rooted in a personalised, artful approach to the production of every piece.
“We built [this company] from the ground up,” Magnús explains. “It went from nothing to something. Now we have a fully-functional, small-scale woodshop, and this is how we want to keep it.”
Gagn produces small batches of products ranging from mirrors to desks. Their materials are of the highest quality and each piece is handmade on a project-specific basis by a team of one – Magnús. “I’ve come to look at [furniture production] more like being an artist. Artists create just because they have to, because they have this need to express themselves. I’m guessing that a lot of creatives don’t make art for money but rather out of necessity, a bit like getting something out of their system.”
Recently, Magnús attended a design fair in Copenhagen where he received a number of questions from large Danish furniture retailers. “They wanted to give me a quote for 100 pieces,” Magnús explains. “All the risk would have been on our end. On the plane back home, I was overwhelmed by both the interest in Gagn and the decision I had to make; do we outsource our production and take a big financial risk, or do we buy a bigger shop in Sauðárkrókur, new and bigger tools, and hire some employees? That option would come with a lot of financial risk, too. Then I thought back to the initial idea I had for the company, which was to keep it small-scale, to be in contact with every customer, and to design locally.”
“It became a question of whether I wanted to be a manager or an artisan. If I outsourced, I’d have a lot less interaction with clients. I would probably wind up writing emails at a desk and acquiring sales, which is not even close to why I went into this field in the first place.”
It’s difficult to accept the possibility that running a large-scale company necessitates a loss of hands-on production, though this seems to be the case in much of the Western world. With production costs of all forms on the rise, especially in Iceland – salaries, equipment, facilities, shipping – it feels like the fate of creative endeavours is an either-or issue; will you scale-up and fully outsource all production, or will you remain small-scale and run everything yourself? Is there really no middle ground, or is it possible for a large-scale company in Iceland to profitably preserve a hands-on experience?
Business as narrative
So much of company-building lies within the decision of its focus. In essence: marketing. A product is arguably only as good as how it appears and how it is explained. For Ragna Sara Jónsdóttir, founder and CEO of FÓLK – a design and lifestyle company geared toward producing decorative products for the home, storytelling is paramount to her company’s success. “We feel it’s important to share as much information as we can about how and why we are doing these things,” she says.
While some of FÓLK’s products are made in Iceland, like many large-scale design companies, they also outsource production across the world, including to Europe and China. “We are very transparent about this,” Ragna explains. “All this discussion about sustainability is nothing if we don’t take the time to explain what we mean by the term and how we enact it in our own business practices.”
Outsourced production wasn’t always the endgame for FÓLK, which was only established in 2017. When Ragna was first developing the company, her aim was to produce every product in Iceland. But when the practicalities pushed against the realities of this feat, it became clear that it just wasn’t feasible to keep all production local. “Icelandic companies aren’t set up for large-scale production. They are more geared toward customised production with high wages, which is enough to put many businesses out of business.”
On FÓLK’s website, a blog post titled “Who Made Your Things?” is headed with a photograph of a gloved artisan sitting on the floor of a ceramics-filled factory, holding a hand-drawn sign that says, “I Made Your Things.” The image is followed by a candid proclamation of transparency in design production and the value of today’s circular economy. No doubt heart-warming, the message doesn’t completely escape the feeling of it being contrived, or somehow straining to communicate the impossible: that our world can ever be completely circular (or balanced) in its distribution of wealth, waste, and resources; that an artisan making a tealight in India can earn as much as someone in Iceland making that same object – indeed, that life is fair.
What FÓLK does have going for it is the juxtaposition of its local material and international production. Often made using stones from digging grounds in Reykjavík, the company’s products are designed to foster an appreciation for the country’s natural resources and its practical and aesthetic versatility in good design. “Every time I see an opportunity to work with Icelandic producers, I seize that opportunity,” Ragna says. This conscious intent, imperfect though it may be in its execution, is very likely enough to keep FÓLK thriving; in just its second year, the company has already achieved marketable success. In 2018, Architectural Digest named it one of nine Icelandic design companies to watch, and its products are stocked by retailers throughout both Iceland and the United Kingdom.
Note: A previous version of this article stated that FÓLK outsourced all production to Asia, which was incorrect. Some of the company’s products are made in Iceland, while other production is outsourced to Europe and China.
