PSFK Talks to Designer Thomas Bina, Environment Furniture

PSFK toured the newly completed Environment Furniture showroom on Broadway just north of Union Square. Both the furniture and the showroom make creative use of reclaimed and recycled materials. Inside you’ll see furniture made from reclaimed Brazilian barn siding, Canvas truck tarps, and recycled yarn. The same materials clad the showroom space and create a furniture showroom like you’ve never seen before. The collections are spread over the main floor and a mezzanine. Lighting highlights the interesting textures of the materials used. Rather than feel manufactured, everything in the showroom appears more crafted. Each piece has a uniqueness based on the found materials. Personal touches are also built into the showroom. There’s a collection of vintage books and records selected by the staff for browsing. PSFK chatted with Thomas Bina, who is responsible for the design of the furniture and creating the NYC showroom.

What inspired you to venture into creating furniture?

That began about 16 years ago. I was in Law school but I’ve always been a creative person. I met a gentleman on a plane coming back from Europe and we became good friends. He had a little furniture store in Los Angeles. I was in my second year of Law School at the time and opportunity arose. He said let’s open another store together and I said this sounds great and we started producing local stuff in Los Angeles.

And then one day a girl had come into our store with this incredible quilted blanket she was using to check against the beds we had in the store and I ask where she got it. She said she got it in Indonesia for $10 I said to myself, Wow if this is what is possible to make for $10 or $15 imagine what they could do for us furniture wise overseas. That sparked me to go overseas to pursue another country to start producing things I could not do in the United States. So through a lot of trials and mistakes we finally got enough of a production to start bringing it to the States but it was a completely different look. It had nothing to do with what I do now. It was in the 90s and it was much more about traditional sleigh beds or dutch colonial style furniture and a little bit of an Asian influence. So I was playing with things that were already selling and changing the dimensions. And then as time went on and I gained more confidence I started to experiment with more of my own ideas and made a transition to contemporary aesthetics. But it wasn’t super contemporary, more transitional. Things were going very well. Then one day, I found myself visiting a friend in Brazil – it was supposed to be a holiday but the currency was so strong in favor of the dollar I said wow, it’s an amazing country there must be a lot of opportunities here. I started to explore and I came across this piece of wood and it was literally trashed. It was all grey, it looked stoney – it had this amazing texture that looked like old skin. I said to myself, how can I find more of this, what is the story with this wood. And I embark on a several week travel in the interior of the country searching for a source for this wood. And eventually after several months I found a way to get it but only in small quantities because no one was really selling the wood. I got enough together to send to my factory but I really didn’t know what I was going to do with it because it all came in one dimension. And then once I figured out some basic ideas I thought this could really bleed into a lot of other concepts. So I tried it, worked out the details, my factory was resistant but eventually got comfortable with the material. And then once I explored Brazil more I found there was much more awareness of certified woods and recycled materials or very innovative uses of materials that I never really saw before. And I got really inspired there so I decided to stay in Brazil. Being in Brazil over the last five years has enabled me to change the look of the whole company and its direction, including its identity and branding.

When was Environment Furniture formally started?

1992, out of a garage actually.

So it’s the quintessential humble roots success story of a guy starting with a table saw in a garage, growing to become a successful furniture maker.

No, actually I didn’t have a structure, so me and my previous partners, we’d bring pieces from Asia and I’d store them in my garage and then sell them on weekends in the street. The neighbors and other retailers would call the police and say it was an illegal garage sale and shut us down. So we’d keep relocating. And eventually word of mouth got around to the High Point furniture building in North Carolina. They had some photos of stuff I was doing and they invited us to go to one of their trade shows. We had no idea what a trade show was, we were used to street pedaling. And when we got to that show, we exploded into the marketplace… But at that time I didn’t have any production capability to produce or deliver anything.

The name Environment Furniture starts to alert customers as to what the business is about. How did you decide on that name and what sort of connotations do you want people to gather from that brand?

The name Environment for me has a dual meaning. One side is about using conscious materials, being protective of the environment. The other side is about the environment we create in our homes. I spend a lot of time developing the merchandising and presentation, so when you enter one of our spaces you really feel a totally different ambiance compared to most showrooms. It’s a lifestyle I believe most people would like to have in their homes. That’s how I see the name working. I think these days more people identify with the green aspect and the conscious side. But for me it’s both.

When you started the business back in ‘92, awareness for sustainability and living green was off the radar to most people compared with the more mainstream awareness we have now. Was the intention with Environment to always keep sustainability close to the core of the business?

No, it wasn’t the intention at all in the beginning. In those days it was just trying to survive. To see how we could keep this business going. Because I love to travel and be out in different countries and be independent and creative. It came up later, like around six years ago, when I was exposed to another culture in Brazil. That’s when it really hit us that this is a direction we should take. Many people don’t know it but Brazil is very forward thinking as far as this issue. They come up with very interesting and unique ways to answer this situation.

How has sustainability evolved within the company?

We are establishing our carbon footprint. On the production side we are switching to all water-base finishes. The wood is reclaimed and the veneers are becoming all certified sourced. Within our showroom, we use recycled paper and glass for displays. We also look at the lighting and try to make is as eco-friendly as possible. For Environment going forward it’s really about the innovative use of materials that most people can’t find or use. I spend most of my time going to places no one else visits. It could come from a village or meeting with an artist and seeing what is really going on and trying to bring that to the US.

What are your thoughts about the current product line? Where do you see Environment fitting in relation to retailers like West Elm or Crate and Barrel?

The way the line is today, to me, this is the first step of where I want to go with the company. I have a lot of other materials and concepts that are in the pipeline that I can only launch at certain stages. As far as the marketplace is – see us as organic contemporary. I like the fusion of old and new materials mixed together in a very clean and contemporary way. Most people who use old woods do so in a very traditional sense. More in the colonial style or Spanish. I think the way I used it was very innovative aside from the designs.

You’ve just opened two new retail stores. There aren’t that many furniture makers with their own shops. Was having your own retail stores always a goal?

Originally one of our original retail customers ABC Home in New York was doing this big project in Los Angeles and they were looking for manufacturers to participate. They gave you 3,000 square feet and you didn’t pay rent, only a percentage of sales. You were in charge of manning it, doing the merchandising and stocking. They handled all the advertising and publicity. We thought, it’s in LA right in our backyard, let’s give it a shot and see how it’ll go. No expectations at all. But to our surprise, it became a phenomenal success. They were expecting to generate a set amount of sales per square foot, and we doubled it. So that’s when we really considered looking into retail ourselves.

‘Organica’ is a downloadable pdf available on your website. It’s an interesting alternative to typical furniture catalogs. Are you planning more issues?

It’s more of a newsletter, we didn’t want to just show photos. It talks about things that were involved with, it give some background about were the wood comes from, it shows some projects were working on. It’s more of a letter, which I find more appealing. It’s been very well received. We’d like to have more issues soon.

You even show some concept sketches at the very end from your sketchbook. Giving a teaser of upcoming products?