Words Marisa Bartolucci

www.kartell.it

In Fulcrum’s launch issue, we interviewed Lorenza Luti, the Marketing and Retail Director for Kartell. Sales have nearly doubled at the company since 2006, when Luti, took over as Marketing and Retail Director. The directional plastics manufacturer is a true example of business Italian style. Kartell’s owner and chairman is Lorenza’s father, Claudio Luti, and his mother Anna Castelli Ferrieri, was the company’s art director during its boldly innovative postwar years. Here, Lorenza continues her discussion about the company’s latest business initiatives and research achievements.

Q. You’ve practically grown up with Kartell but in a short time you’ve already managed to double sales and implement fresh strategies. What do you hope to achieve for Kartell?

A. At the moment, my main focus is to explore and develop our retail opportunities. We have 100 flagship stores and 100 additional retail shops. My goal is to have a Kartell store in every major international city. The stores really generate turnover and brand awareness for us; they help us spread the Kartell philosophy.

Q. You’re interested in bringing Kartell products to fashion, schools and health care. Do you think that new markets can help inspire the “next generation” of Kartell materials and designs?

A. I think so. Innovation is the key word for Kartell. It’s in our DNA. We always find new materials and we will do so forever. Right now we’re doing a lot with PMMA, or polymethylmethacrylate, which is a transparent plastic with weather resistant features. The Toobe lamp by Ferruccio Laviani is made from a PMMA extruded tube; thanks to a truly innovative coloring technology, the Toobe is the first Kartell lamp to have a “faded” look that permits special light be diffused inside the cylinder.

Q. How does Kartell select its designers? Has Kartell ever been approached by an unknown designer with a product that they have then manufactured?

A. It’s important for us that designers are apart of our Kartell family. My father meets all the designers personally and we collaborate with them daily. It’s about being around the design table and arriving at the end together, from the drawing board to the prototypes. Ferruccio Laviani, who designed our lamp collection, including the Bourgie Table Lamp, is a designer my father met eighteen years ago. They simply met and now he directs our shops world-wide and he’s a famous designer on his own. He calls Kartell his second home.

Q. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Dr. Glob, Phillippe Starck’s first chair for Kartell. Starck released the new Mr. Impossible chair in March. What can these chairs tell us about Kartell’s evolution over the past two decades?

A. Starck revolutionized the way Kartell used materials with the Dr. Glob chair. In the 1980’s, plastic materials were made into round, transparent objects in primary colors. With Dr. Glob, Starck mixed plastic with metal, created lots of angles and developed pastel colors, which were very difficult to find back then, to create the first opaque plastic chair. In March, we launched Starck’s Mr. Impossible chair, which has been very successful in the press because of its innovative shape: the frame is transparent and the seat is colored, so it looks like you’re sitting in air. The frame and the seat were combined using a laser, which was almost impossible to do, and that’s how it got its name. Because it’s made of polycarbonate, you could throw this chair across the room and it would be fine. For Kartell, it’s always about innovation and design at affordable prices.