Massproductions

In 1999 two designers – one Swedish, one British – started working together as consultants to the Swedish furniture industry. Together, Magnus Elebäck and Chris Martin took on big league clients, and then ten years later decided to launch their own furniture design and production company, Massproductions.

The two designers, sharing vision of functional, elegant, modern design, decided to break free of PR-driven product strategies to create a modernist furniture company focusing on the interplay between object and context. Massproductions alludes to the beauty of efficient, sustainable, high quality industrial production. By working closely with the engineers and machine operators at their production facilities, the company ensures the integrity of their vision down to every cut and bend.

The debut product was the Tio chair, which earned rave reviews, awards and well-respected clients. The commitment to quality, function and what Chris Martin calls “obvious design” won the approval of the cognoscenti, and Massproductions has built on the success with Tio to create an award-winning line of products and a network of more than a hundred retailers servicing top architects around the world.

Building on the clean, functional elegance of modernism, Massproductions brings its core principles into the post-digital era. This translates to multifunctional, highly adaptable design classics – that function like a smart, contemporary toolbox for both interior architecture and the retail market. The collection is highly adaptable and customizable and thus blends in effortlessly as hotel or restaurant furniture.

To designer-in-chief Chris Martin form is a byproduct of function, materials and production processes. He has been called a minimalist but in fact he’s a radical pragmatist, drawing inspiration from the production line rather than from artistic imagination. This results in an incredibly strong collection of Scandinavian inspired designer furniture.

Magnus Elebäck is a designer turned entrepreneur and CEO, devising Massproductions’ unique way of doing business. By controlling the entire production chain, the filters inherent in a designer/producer relationship are removed. A seamless, fully transparent design and manufacturing process gives Massproductions the ability to create products that would otherwise be hard to conceive, or risk getting stuck somewhere in the development process.

Once Elebäck and Martin have settled on a design, they work directly with the engineers at their manufacturing facilities to make sure the end result conforms to their exacting standards.

In recent years it has been customary to produce and consume furniture as fashion items. This is not a sustainable path forward. While the joy of new, beautiful things is undeniable, consumer culture in general is detrimental to the environment.

Sustainability is built into the core concepts of Massproductions. The company’s fundamental approach to furniture production relies on intelligent, economic application of materials and rational manufacturing in volume, with minimum waste.

Massproductions’ furniture is built to last, both physically and aesthetically. Many products are made in a single material, and when a combination of materials is necessary, they are easily separable for recycling. The wood is sourced from sustainable forests and wherever possible recycled material is used. Safe glues and paints are, of course, used throughout.

While Chris Martin is a true design specialist, Magnus Elebäck is the main force behind the innovative and sustainable strategy of building a lean, vertically integrated company, designing products in-house, partnering with carefully selected manufacturing facilities and selling to a global market.