Interview

SLESIN: So who else was on your team when you started Established & Sons?

WILLIS: The team was quite tight. There was Sebastian Wrong, who is still my business partner and design development director. There was Mark Holmes, whom I knew from art college; he’s a designer himself. There was Angad Paul, who was manufacturer, business partner, and an investor in the company. And Tamara Caspersz, who was also a founding member. We all came from creative positions, first and foremost, which is evident in how we put our collections together. We took risks and went into areas a traditional manufacturer wouldn’t dream of going.

SLESIN: How do you think people will look back on what you’re doing? For example, could you compare it to something like the Memphis movement or Droog Design?

WILLIS: Well, we aren’t a traditional manufacturer. I’ve always referred to us as a design company—a design collective—and I’m about supporting designers on every level. And as the company develops, I think that will become more and more apparent. So, yes, I hope that one day people will see us as a movement. But I don’t want to be too bold and say we are quite in the league of the two that you just mentioned. [laughs]

SLESIN: If you look at Memphis, although the designs were very different from each other and had very different personalities, it was really one concept. What’s interesting about your company is that it has a very wide range of expression.

WILLIS: It does, and I think that’s born out of who we are and also the time we live in. We’re very much our own curators. We do pieces that don’t always fit in the same sort of stable. Our curation reflects how customers sort of curate their own environments now.

SLESIN: You started with British designers, but you’ve branched out to designers from all over. For example, you work with Roy McMakin, who’s out in Seattle.

WILLIS: He’s an artist who we represent now in Europe. The original position was to support British-based designers because they didn’t have a platform in the U.K. But it was always the intention that once the company gained strength and presence we’d reverse that trend, in a sense, and bring international designers to us.

SLESIN: Was Zaha Hadid the first one?

WILLIS: Zaha was one of our first designers because she is actually British-based. You’d find her in every place except for London, and she has a British passport and has been running her business out of the u.k. for more than 25 years. So she was part of our original stable. But last year in Milan we announced our partnership and collaboration with overseas designers. We were already being approached by the greatest international designers, so it felt right.

SLESIN: You do two kinds of productions. I can’t really call it mass-production, but you have special editions and then you have something a little larger-scale.

WILLIS: None of our pieces are truly mass-produced. The lighting now is becoming much higher volume, and those kinds of pieces we sell around the world in 40 countries. But the top end of our collection is often limited editions. And those are mainly represented through the London gallery.

SLESIN: So McMakin isn’t going to make high-volume pieces?

WILLIS: Not yet. His show just opened with us and it’s doing well, but it’s an extremely challenging moment.

SLESIN: That was going to be my next question. [laughs] I hate the expression “challenging times”—all times are challenging. But how is the state of the economy affecting your business?

WILLIS: The business side of me is making sensible business decisions in terms of targeting less affected areas of the market. We are in a good position, considering that we are still a young company. We are still growing, and we can go into areas where we have little presence—even in this challenging economy—and post a substantial year-end growth. We see ourselves coming through this horrendous period. But that’s the business side of me. The creative side is extremely excited, because what you see happening during these periods—something that always tends to happen when things are bleak—is you start seeing some wonderfully creative things going on. During the last two or three years, the whole strategy of design chasing the tailcoats of the art world, and the amount of editions being produced of some very dubious quality, isn’t going to happen now. With new designers—at least the ones we are working with—you see them taking a different approach, a different attitude, and what comes with that is more exciting, with far greater integrity.

SLESIN: Since you do have such a range of designers, do you notice a different audience drawn to certain designers more than others?

WILLIS: I’m here to work with and represent the designers, and I’m here to help them support their work. The exciting thing about working with these guys is their signature, their process, their way of thinking. Established & Sons is a celebration of the designer and the designer’s signature. So we do reach into very different audiences. Somebody who is a massive fan of Jasper Morrison and appreciates the Crate Series [a collection of pine pieces started in 2006] is not necessarily the same person who is going to like Zaha’s work or Future Systems. But that makes us who we are.

SLESIN: There are also schizophrenic people who like everything.

WILLIS: Well, I mean, I count myself as one of them. Maybe I’m the worst curator in the world, but I believe they do work well together and have a dynamic that plays off of each other. There are a lot of Jasper Morrison fans who are total purists, and that’s what they want. I’m working now with Maarten Baas on a piece for Milan this year, and I’m also working with Jasper and with the Bouroullec Brothers, and, obviously, they have a very different belief and force and skill of design to that of Zaha, for example. But then you have someone like Jaime Hayón, who’s doing the most wacko stuff, but who is Jasper Morrison’s biggest fan.