#HTE

Slow/d: “The First Distributed Design Factory”

At first glance, this design for a stacking chair called the RJR might not seem like much:

It’s simple, clean, consists entirely of 90-degree cuts and looks like anyone could make one. But that’s actually the point. That’s because Italy-based industrial designer Mario Alessiani designed it for Slow/d, an Italian outfit that bills themselves as “the first distributed design factory.” What Slow/d is shooting to be is, in essence, a production company with no warehouses, no inventory and no fabricating facility of their own; instead individual craftspeople and artisans scattered throughout Italy are their production arm.

Under Slow/d’s scheme, designers submit their designs to the Slow/d site for approval. Consumers peruse the chosen designs, and when they purchase one, an artisan local to the consumer that’s been pre-approved by Slow/d is then tasked with building and delivering the piece. “In this way,” explains Alessiani’s entry to the VModern Furniture Design Competition, “everyone works and we have less transportation and pollution.”

The aim of the designer was to make a wooden chair that can be [built] by the most number of carpenters in order to make the net of artisans capable of doing it as big as possible. The idea was to create a design that could be done with base carpentry tools but with something more that makes the chair recognizable and functional.

Thus far Slow/d claims to have some 1,300 designers and artisans signed up, but I could only find 20 products currently for sale on their site. Some examples of the furniture currently being sold are Nicola Dalla Casta’s Woodrope, a flatpack stool with structural stability being provided by rope in tension:

FareDesign’s similarly flatpack Join coatrack:

Mess+Simoni’s Cullatonda cradle:

All of the designs feature straightforward construction similar to Alessiani’s. While design snobs might sniff at what they perceive to be “idiot-proof” construction designed to attract producers of varying talents, I think the idea of distributed manufacturing has merit, and the long-term environmental benefits, if such a thing were to work, are undeniable.

Less clear are some of the details of the precise payouts offered. First off, the site states that designers score a 10% royalty on each piece sold—if that percentage sounds low to you, it’s still far higher than what you’d get from an established furniture brand—and the initial fabricator who helps them prototype that design gets a 5% royalty. Those numbers seem fine to me, and is a particularly good way for a fabricator to continuously earn a little coin after a one-time job.

Where it gets murky, at least for me trying to puzzle through the badly-translated English description, is that once a particular design’s “manufacturing license” is sold to the fabricator who will ultimately build the exact version going to a consumer, the designer gets 65%; is that a one-time fee, and who determines the price of the license? Furthermore, that last-mile fabricator is said to receive only 5%. The website is not clear on whether the fabricators are also paid for the actual materials and labor, but I imagine they’d have to be; otherwise the payout in building a €280.60 (US $305) RJR chair only amount to €14 (US $15.25) per unit for the last-mile fabricator, which hardly seems worthwhile for what is likely several hours of labor.

In any case, here is Slow/d’s pitch, and I hope they can hire a proper translator in the future to make the financials a bit more clear: