The Value of Iconic Design: A Conversation with Bo Hellberg of String Furniture

Can you begin by giving me the background to String?

String was established by Nisse Strinning and his wife, Kajsa. It started with a competition launched by Bonnier in 1949. Bonnier was a big publishing company in Sweden. It’s global now – they do all kinds of stuff. But back then they just sold books, and, to be crude, they wanted to sell more of them. This was a time of democratisation in western Europe, post-second world war. In Sweden, a few important events coincided. New manufacturing processes became available, as well as new materials, and the Bauhaus movement was happening in the background and influencing the world of design. The Swedish middle class realised they didn’t want to buy the kind of traditional furniture they’d been buying for the past 100 years – they wanted things that were new and modern and represented who they were as they moved into the 1950s, which they thought of as a modern era. People were buying cars and new kitchen appliances. And they were educating themselves, and buying more books. Bonnier realised they needed more space to put them. So they came up with the idea of a competition to design a bookshelf that was modern and flexible – that could grow. They specifically targeted this middle class consumer.

And Strinning submitted String to the competition?

Yes. He came up with a system that was flexible — that could expand along with the number of books you bought, which was what Bonnier wanted. It was super lightweight. It was flat-packed (which was quite new at the time). It was modern. It was robust and strong but also light. And it had a really clever use of materials. It was called, at the time, Bonnier Folk Library. The shelving was actually distributed by Bonnier for a few years — it was a joint venture to begin with, before String became its own entity. Strinning was actually an architect and engineer by trade, not a designer. But he had designed tables and other products before. A dish-rack he’d designed post-war had taken off, become a huge success. And he was very much into function and materiality. He was trained in the Bauhaus idea that form follows function. But there was still beauty in the symmetry he used in his designs.

What was the reaction?

Well, his wife dismissed the first designs. She was, like, “What’s this nonsense? You’re an architect!” She wondered why he was taking time to enter a competition to design a bookshelf. But he had made a prototype and put it up on a wall, and everybody who walked past it stopped and commented on it. It was then that he knew he had something.

I read that String was the best-selling Scandinavian product in Germany at one time …

It’s funny. When you talk to Germans of a certain age, even people from mainland Europe, they remember it. It was everywhere in the 1960s. That was a peak. It was amazing. It just took off. And Strinning kept expanding the range: there were desks, small beauty cabinets, drinks cabinets, drawers … It was even used in the UN Building in New York. It’s still there, which is very cool. But in the 1970s it started fizzling out. I think IKEA had something to do with it. In the 1970s IKEA did very well — it became cool — and people turned against a lot of the classics of Scandinavian design. Swedes are not particularly sentimental, so shifts in taste can happen very quickly. People moved String out of their homes and into their summer cottages. That’s where it all ended up.

The company was relaunched in 2004. Can you tell me how that came about?

String was produced through the 70's and into the 00's, at which point the distributors were on the verge of bankruptcy, due to bad management. Peter Erlandsson and business partner Pär Josefsson got wind of the fact the rights to produce String were about to be auctioned off, and they jumped on the opportunity. Peter and Pär went to meet Nisse immediately; they got on well and they decided to go for it, to attempt to bring the brand back to its former glory. When Peter and co-founder Pär relaunched the brand as String Furniture, people reacted. They saw it was vintage but that somehow it was also new, and it seemed to fit with the zeitgeist. The system was relaunched in white, which changed its guise slightly, and it took off. The brand is now sold in 42 countries.

Why do you think people buy String products?

I think there has always been this belief that people bought String for function. That’s not entirely true – it’s not seen as just a product. What we’ve found is that people very much feel for and relate to the brand itself. Our customers are often big String fans. They share and talk about their systems, and how they use them, online.

There’s a fondness for the brand itself?

There’s a real love. And it’s cross-generational. We have some people buying String because they are reminiscing about the 50s and 60s and we have other customers who are coming to it in the modern day. And people are using it differently nowadays. To be frank, though I read books and have some, I’ve cleaned out a lot of my bookshelves. There are some books I cherish, of course, but the concept of a big library — I don’t think it’s that common anymore. String has become a piece of furniture that acts like an identity piece. It helps customers show themselves off, the things that are important in their lives. We all have objects we’d prefer to store behind a cabinet door, or in drawers, of course. But we also need shelving to highlight statement pieces: those few select books you feel represent you, or objects or cherished items you want to see or be around all of the time. That’s what String has become. Some people still use the shelving for very practical reasons, in the kitchen for example, which is cool. But really it has become more of a way to reflect something about yourself. It is furniture as an extension of your personality.

Is the String philosophy primarily to do with flexibility?

No, I don’t think so. I categorise String in the same way I would categories an Arne Jacobsen chair. You don’t buy an Jacobsen chair just because it’s something comfortable to sit in. (Actually, some of his chairs are not comfortable.) You buy it because it is an iconic piece that shows off a part of your character, reveals something about yourself – it shows to others you have a certain fondness for design. Thought flexibility is important, yes. When you buy a String system you are buying something that will stay with you for your lifetime. If you move house, it will move with you. You can set it up in different ways. You will never need to recycle it. You can pass it on to your children. You can add things to it. But I don’t think that’s the most important thing for our audience. I think they eventually discover that. And then they realise they are making an investment. “When I move, I will take it with me, and reconfigure it in my new home, and perhaps I will add something more …”

Tell me about the manufacturing process …

When I first started, I didn’t know how String products were made. I mean, I had an idea that it was steel and wood, but I didn’t know that the steel was made from secondhand car parts recycled from Norway, that it wasn't virgin steel. And I didn’t know that the factory that melts the steel have their own wind farm, and they use 100% fossil-free energy. That’s not a story we talk about much at String. We talk mainly about value and design. But the way our products are manufactured is very impressive.

Our shelves are made in a factory in a part of Sweden called Smaland. It’s very pretty. It’s a pig to get to – it takes hours – but it’s lovely. It’s a part of Sweden that is renowned for its manufacturing skills, and the manufacturing of furniture in particular. And it’s impressive at that factory, too. The shelf lacquer they use is water-based, so no pollutants are released into the atmosphere. They use fossil-free energy. They generate hydro power from a river. They use off-cuts in the burner, which also creates energy. Nothing is wasted. Often, I think to myself, “This is really good, why don’t we talk about this?”

There is still a large seasonal focus in the design world. On making new products every year. But you don’t subscribe to that idea …

The way a lot of brands work is like this. They have to come up with new ideas and innovations every year, and they continue to expand and expand, and everything they design gets manufactured in Vietnam and shipped across the world. That’s not how we do it. In fact, the way we do it is counterintuitive as a business in many was — we could probably find ways to cut costs if we wanted to — but the way we do things gives us many benefits. 98% of our product is purchased from Swedish suppliers. In some ways that makes no sense – we could probably buy it all cheaper elsewhere. But there is a quality and control aspect. We know all the suppliers we work with. The shortest relationship we’ve had with any of our suppliers is nine years; we’ve been working with most of them for 15 years or more. There’s a lot of trust between us all. And a lot of frank discussion. It’s good to have that. And we can physically visit our factories to look at what’s going on. Not that there would ever be a problem, particularly when it comes to the treatment of factory workers, because everyone here is unionised – we’re socialists in this part of the world.

A couple of years ago we asked an independent consultant to look over our processes, and they found that the factories we work with are way ahead of the game in terms of how they source energy, how they source materials, and in terms of emissions. And then there’s the fact our furniture is flat-packed, so the volume of product we can shift is amazing, while using less CO2. Other companies are able to fit one chest of drawers on a pallet. We can use the same pallet to supply for ten homes. There’s lots of cleverness here that has been part of our system for years and years and years, and which we often take for granted. Sometimes I see other brands talking about the environmental actions they’re planning to put in place by 2035. And I think, “Hang on, we’re already doing this! What’s the problem? Just change now. Fix it. You just have to fix it.”

Is the social responsibility the brand seems to subscribe to a Swedish thing? Or does it come from the owners?

I think it’s a bit of both. The original founders, Pär and Peter, have a sense social responsibility. People are treated well. It’s not a huge company. There is trust and partnership here.

What’s in store for the brand? The product won’t be changing in form dramatically …

No, it will be the same forever, though we plan to introduce new additions. The amazing thing about Nisse Strinning is that he had so many ideas. He was a prolific innovator. So we have an archive of designs. Some of the objects that were in production back in the 1960s but which slipped out of production – we have reintroduced those: a certain cabinet, a different kind of desk. But there are new ideas, too – objects he never got around to manufacturing. The archive is like a gold mine. We head back there every now and then and have a rummage, and inevitably we find something. 

The other thing we’re looking at is materials. We plan to honour the legacy of doing things that are smart in manufacturing, and making things that are strong and durable. And finally: colours. We introduced a beige collection five years ago, which has done well. But there it is a gradual transition when we make these decisions. It’s a slow, considered process. We’ll always be careful.