Thoughts #2

L: Welcome to Frontal Lobe episode two on – I don’t know, what is it? 

B: It’s our little blog on making cool shit.

L: Yeah! So Frontal Lobe until recently was a lot of bespoke work. How did you come to the point of developing an in-house collection and bringing it to market?

B: Yeah. I guess some of that’s historical. I was always the kid that played in the shed and made his own stuff and designed his own stuff.  I have always enjoyed the freedom of being able to just dream up something and design it without the constraints of a customer wanting a specific design, but the reality was that,  just in terms of running a business that could keep its doors open, Frontal Lobe has survived by doing bespoke, one-off projects for people. It’s still  a lot of fun doing the one-off projects for people, designing something special for them and making it. But the thing we found, after doing that for 10 plus years, is it’s a lot of energy for every project without having any repeatability at the end of it. It was just getting a little exhausting and alongside that we had slowly developed our own products. I never really stopped dreaming up ideas and filling sketchbooks with pictures of chairs and tables and lighting and all kinds of furniture – some of those had seen their way to becoming prototypes. Some of them had seen their way through to becoming pretty refined products that sat in our showroom. 

So, developing a collection to bring to market – I think we made the decision that in order to scale the company up and create some repeatability we needed to release our own line of products. We looked back at all the things we’d done over the years in design, and we came to the conclusion that statement chairs were our thing. People loved what we’d done – people that had found us, which wasn’t that many, really loved our chairs. They’re probably the one thing that we’d sold more of.

We identified that there was a real hole in the market for those one-off special pieces of furniture, particularly chairs in New Zealand, and maybe even globally. I guess a lot of people are still buying the replica chairs of iconic designers from the 50s. We thought, ’Hey maybe this is the thing we’re good at doing, and we’ll dive a bit deeper down that rabbit hole.’ 

L: Right. Question two. So in terms of the armchair range, what visual or structural DNA or design language connects all five of the chairs as one collection? 

B: I guess we have always integrated mechanical design and furniture design – that’s I guess reflective of my background in  mechanical design and machinery design. My background in working more in metals than in timbers means I kind of look at things more from a machining point of view than necessarily a furniture maker’s eye. I think probably the distinct thread through our designs is that we have furniture that’s more engineer crafted, maybe. Although everything is handcrafted, there’s this kind of engineered aesthetic to it – things have engineered components or ways that they go together that, I guess, are  not traditional furniture makers’ solutions. You might not see as many traditional furniture making techniques in our chairs, you’re going to see engineering solutions I guess to problems.

L: In the FL2, that little metal bit that clips into the side, is that custom engineered?

B: Yeah that’s custom engineered to fit that – they’re all hand machined in my dad’s lathe in his garage. I just

have to promise to clean up afterwards!

L: It’s got to be such a point of difference to be able to engineer – obviously you were saying before that the joinery is crafted, but then they are married with custom metal components that are engineered. I guess it is quite a point of difference that you’re doing both. That little metal bit in the FL2 really reinforces that for me. 

B: I guess we’re very multi-disciplinary just by virtue of the life lived to this point – from growing up in an engineering workshop really, that was my dad’s business as a kid. So I was more comfortable working with metal as a kid, with welders and lathes and things, and then did my building apprenticeship which is definitely more timber, but then went back into mechanical design which was once again more in metals and engineering materials. Then I studied furniture making which was definitely back into the wood. So yeah, we do either and I guess we like to do both when it comes to making chairs. So there’s definitely the collision of those metal components and engineered little pieces and then more the classic timber. 

L: That helps explain the design language so much, just to me personally, to distill it down like that. 

B: I think when I started playing with furniture and lighting and things, which was years and years ago, I wasn’t a furniture maker by trade at that point. So I didn’t even know traditional furniture making techniques. All my solutions were engineering-based. If I wanted to join this piece of wood to this in a tricky way, I’d come up with a solution that was probably more of a metalwork solution and a traditional joiner would have done it some other way.

L: That’s cool.

B: But it’s kind of meant that all our stuff has kind of unusual, I guess, alternative solutions to problems that probably aren’t traditional furniture making. 

L: How did keeping prototyping and production in-house benefit Frontal Lobe when creating the range? And maybe I’ll pop in something here – just a note that all of Frontal Lobe’s statement furniture pieces are conceptualised, designed and made by hand at the Frontal Lobe workshop and showroom at 22 Stanley Street in Sydenham.

B: I think there’s just a real smooth synergy when it’s all under one roof and we just love the whole process. I think it’s that and I wouldn’t want to outsource any of it. We get so much joy from every stage of the process. From daydreaming to conceptualising and modelling up and sketching, going into the workshop and choosing a piece of wood or a piece of metal and fashioning that and then turning it into a reality is so much fun. Maybe we’re just selfish, we keep it all to ourselves. But also I think to have those pieces evolving under the one roof –  you can see the prototypes developing so it’s always fresh in your mind. You solve problems probably more intuitively when it’s all under the one roof. It certainly creates more seamless solutions. Communication’s easy. It’s faster. There’s also so many efficiency reasons to do the whole process in-house.

L: And obviously the team is very small and tight-knit as well. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the Frontal Lobe team? 

B: There’s only three of us full time. Then Amy, my amazing supportive wife, who has her own crazy job, but still jumps in and tries to sort out my receipts and back-of-house mess that has piled up everywhere. And then it’s great having you on board doing all the marketing stuff that we’ve neglected for so long. So there’s Aidan, who’s a qualified furniture maker who can take a drawing and turn it into a real piece. Aidan’s quite pragmatic in terms of just making something, figuring out the best way to make it and getting it done. And then Levi, who’s a furniture maker apprentice, and my son! So he’s on the learning curve there but, like me, he’s grown up around this stuff and has quite a natural design bent. I guess I’m cross-disciplinary from the design side and then also from the maker side.

L: For a client investing $4,000 to $6,000 in a statement armchair, what sets Frontal Lobe furniture pieces apart

from a normal armchair?

B: First and foremost I think to know personally who made your furniture is a very unique thing. I don’t think there are too many things in your house you could point to and go, ’I know who made that. I’ve met them. I’d consider them a friend.’ I guess at the very foundational level to know who made your piece, and that they know you and there’s a relationship there, is a pretty cool thing.

And then the next thing is that the materials we use are always super high quality, and as sustainably and ethically sourced as we can. That every piece has been handcrafted, that every element of your chair has had a human lovingly craft it – there’s no automation. There are no robots that don’t feel something when they put your chair together, and with that comes a certain degree of quality. And then, yeah, we’re low volume. So there will always be a limited number of these chairs in the world.

So when you own one, I guess you own something that’s quite exclusive in terms of how many there are around. And we would love to think that with all of those elements there comes a longevity to the product that would be passed down through generations because of its quality, but it’s also its inherent value with its story, and that hopefully it’s not just a chair but it’s like a piece of art that people genuinely really love.

L: Yeah, also I feel like it’s worth not skipping over the fact that it is New Zealand design. I mean how many statement armchair furniture designers are there out there in New Zealand? And with your background specifically, this is a furniture piece that has been mechanically engineered. It’s a whole different value that comes with the design in a particular set of skills I think that Frontal Lobe brings.

So a lot of buyers care very deeply about provenance, or the supply chain and the story behind an item that they’re buying. How do Frontal Lobe’s supply partners and material choices shape the story behind Frontal Lobe pieces?

B: Yeah, some of our pieces have almost been reverse engineered to incorporate local design or have been inspired by local suppliers. I think the FL2 is a classic case of the oak dowel components that we saw lying on the floor at Leech Products, a cool little production workshop in Leeston, and they inspired the design of that chair. They are intended for ballastrading handrails – so that’s kind of the backstory to that product. But certainly once we get to a concept drawing and we can see the elements to it, then we start to ask the questions of what are those elements made of? And I guess that decision is informed by the supply for materials and where we can get them, who in our network of relationships supplies quality materials and with ethical sourcing. So usually design comes first, but then when we get to the prototyping of that design, that begins to inform the materials we choose to use in every one of our chairs.

L: And more on the supply side, what are those supplier relationships like, or I guess how have they been fostered or nurtured, those relationships?

B: We would say all of our suppliers are our friends. By virtue of them being our friends they naturally have concern for the best outcome for us, and vice versa. That comes from just being humans, doing life together, having coffees together, enjoying each other’s company, being friendly. We just try to make The Lobe an inviting place. So, our suppliers aren’t treated as suppliers. We’ve never tried to screw a supplier down to the cheapest they can supply. We’ve always tried to value that relationship. So yeah, the outcomes are decided more by mutual friendship than they are decided by cost. We’ve never gone to another supplier to try and play one off against the other for a better price or product. We trust that the relationships we have will mean that our suppliers will give us the best outcomes. 

L: Nice. 

B: And most of the suppliers for Frontal Lobe products are sitting local where possible. Certainly any of the subcontractors that are involved in our products – powder-coaters, fabricators, welders, upholsterers – are all within a five minute drive.

Some of our materials do come from overseas, but they’re still supplied by local companies. Some of that is just by virtue of New Zealand being small – and we don’t necessarily manufacture all things, like our Warwick recycled wool products are made in Italy with processes that were developed in Europe. But we choose to use that product because it has such a strong recycled component and such a great story. So it’s worth going to an offshore manufacturer, but we still have a local rep and Warwick is still a New Zealand represented company where we have local relationships.

L: So we will be back in the next episode with the inspiration and creation of the FL1.

B: Yep – can’t wait!