Page 108 - Sharp: The Book For Men FW21

“A
NYONE CAN DESIGN COOL STUFF. BUT THE
world doesn’t need more cool stuff. The world needs things with a purpose,” says Jan Christian Vestre. He is on holiday, seated somewhere along the Norwegian coast. This break — interrupted only by our interview — is a welcome one. As CEO of his family’s historic street furniture company, Vestre, Jan Christian is a busy man, and has spent much of the past year travelling from Oslo to a forest near the village of Magnor on Norway’s eastern edge, just before the Swedish border. Here, inside a thicket of forest, Vestre is constructing the
Jan Christian may be at the wheel of one of the world’s most ambitious design brands, but he doesn’t really care about furniture — at least not in terms of details like form or colour. “I’m not sure if I can say that, but that’s the reality,” he says, laughing. “Furniture, to me, is just a tool for bringing people together. Luckily, I have great colleagues that care about selling furniture, so they’re doing that part of the job and I’m focusing on the mission and vision.”
His vision? To turn the business his grandfather started back in 1947 — then a manufacturer of not only benches but playground equipment, fishcake-making machines, and other mechanical products — into the world’s most sustainable furniture brand and a harbinger of global change. The plan is to be a global beacon for “green growth”, proof that economic success isn’t at odds with doing right by the earth and its inhabitants. “Capitalism can be a good thing, but it should be a more social and sustainable capitalism. What I dislike is when private companies say, ‘As long as we can maximize our short-term profits, we shouldn’t think about anything else’ — not the climate crisis or the fact that 800 million people are still living in extreme poverty,” says Jan Christian. “Our goal is not to sell as many pieces of furniture as possible, and my goal is not to become rich or famous, it’s to change the world — and that’s what we’re doing by showing that it is actually possible to do business in a more sustainable way.”
While the family business was, of course, always a topic of conversation around the dinner table, Jan Christian never had ambitions of becoming CEO. But during his first year of law school, when he was busy working with NGOs and climate organizations, his father died of cancer. Jan Christian had a choice: bring in an outsider (“someone with better knowledge and better education; someone better prepared for the task”) or do it himself. “I felt this responsibility for bringing the company forward,” he says.
In 2012, at just 25 years old, Jan Christian officially became Vestre’s CEO. And while, in some strange way, he is something of an outsider to his family’s company — if such a thing is pos- sible — things are, so far, going pretty damn well. Under his leadership, Vestre has improved productivity by more than 50 per cent, expanded into 30 countries, and doubled its annual turnover more than five times, in large part due to a thriving export market outside of Norway. “We probably have the biggest organic growth in our industry in Europe, maybe even in the United States,” says Jan Christian. And today, you’ll find Vestre’s wood and steel benches inside places like Manhattan’s Times Square, where they admirably withstand the wear and tear of the most popular tourist destination on earth.
To outsiders, Vestre’s growth may appear as though it’s hap- pened in spite of using 100 per cent renewable energy or the greenest materials on earth in all its manufacturing, or having only emissions-free internal transportation (it was one of the first companies in Norway to order the Tesla semi), or offering lifetime warranties on all their products. (“If all companies stopped creat- ing throwaway solutions, that alone would probably solve the the climate crisis because then we could reduce our energy consump- tion dramatically.”) Sure, these things all cost money — and yes, there are cheaper products on the market — but Vestre’s moves have dovetailed with shifting consumer values, namely a growing preoccupation with carbon footprints and the climate crisis.
Earlier this year, Vestre broke new ground by becoming the first furniture brand to adopt “environmental product declara- tions” for its entire product range. Just like Vestre advertises a price tag, it now declares how much carbon dioxide and energy went into a product’s manufacture. The idea is that it will help consumers make better more decisions about the real cost of what they’re buying. And while it’s a move that costs Vestre money right now, it’s one that Jan Christian believes will appeal to a large (and growing) number of consumers.
world’s most environmentally friendly furniture factory.
Set to be finished in December, The Plus is the biggest in- vestment in Norway’s furniture industry in decades. Designed by Danish starchitect Bjarke Ingels and clad in charred timber, the cross-shaped building will produce Vestre designs — benches, bike racks, planters, and trashcans, among others — while using 90 per cent less energy and producing 55 per cent less carbon emissions than a traditional factory. It owes such accomplishments to details like 1,200 rooftop solar panels, or walls so thick the factory requires
less heating when a Scandinavian winter sets in.
Even less conventional, The Plus will not be surrounded by
a drab industrial park of concrete and chain-link fences but by a 300-acre forest filled with playground equipment, art installa- tions, woodland auditoriums, and viewing towers. There are no fences. Visitors are, in classic Norwegian fashion, free to roam as they like. Bring a tent and you can spend the night. Bring some walking shoes and you can hike up The Plus’s sloping grass roof to glimpse the forest canopy or peer inside the factory. “Everyone can watch the manufacturing,” says Jan Christian. “[There are] no secrets. We share everything, even with our competitors — because sharing is caring, at least in terms of accelerating the green shift.”
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