Trash to Treasure | Design Talk with Morten Woldum

Blending functional principles with no-frills industrial aesthetics, Vipp is a steel-centred love story that continues to grow with each generation, and narrating it with an unfaltering passion is Morten Woldum, its charismatic CEO who believes that slow and steady will always win the race.

Words by Monisha Sivanesan | Images courtesy of Vipp

Who could’ve predicted that one little bin made out of love would eventually sow the seed for a full-blown design universe of accessories, kitchens, furniture and so much more? Holger Nielsen certainly didn’t when he first traded in his lottery win for a metal lathe to work on one of his greatest passions: steel. The story of Vipp is an unforgettable one indeed, marking its origins way back in 1939 when the skilled metalsmith made a revolutionary pedal bin that would functionally, and visually, stand the test of time for his beloved wife Marie who kindly requested one for her newly opened salon.

He named it Vipp, to which the inspiration behind it was never confirmed but Jette Egelund, his youngest daughter and immediate successor who currently runs it side-by-side her two children, Kasper and Sofie, in the Copenhagen and New York offices, remains convinced that it alludes to the lid’s tilting movement for which ‘vippe’ means ‘to tilt’ in the Danish language. Anyways, the bin was never intended to be sold. However, the many women who visited Marie’s salon found it perfect for their husbands’ clinics and requested for more, prompting Holger to begin production on a larger scale. So, what exactly made the bin so special and so memorable to the point of earning a permanent spot in the design and architecture collection at the legendary Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)?

According to CEO Morten Woldum, this emblematic piece holds a plethora of great features of what we now refer to as ‘industrial design,’ a term that was non-existent in 1939. Nevertheless, Holger was a great craftsman and possessed a desirable aesthetic sense. “He was so ahead of his time, not just through his longevity in thinking and unwavering stance on quality which set the superior standards that are still strictly adhered to by the brand today, but he also managed to appeal to stakeholders, i.e. women, in a time where waste and trash were not something architects wanted to relate to,” explains Morten.

“We introduce products when they are ready — not when the market expects them.”

Morten Woldum
CEO of Vipp

Fast forward to the 90s when Jette took over, her impeccable people skills, attributed to an extensive human resource management background, allowed the brand to really take off. By outsourcing the bin production to a third party, she and the kids could finally work on scaling the brand, starting with a change in the way the bins were branded and distributed. She could have easily scattered them in hardware stores across the globe, but insisted on placing them in high-end furniture stores, allowing them to be associated with, and seen in, a new light.

Having adapted the specially curated, highly disciplined principles of the bin, the extraordinary V1 kitchen defies industry norms through its innovative engineering, as opposed to sticking to the standard woodworking approach. Made in a factory and designed with feedback from professional chefs, the freestanding, and suspended, kitchen with a stainless-steel worktop is solid as a rock to take on any culinary-affiliated beatings. Matter of fact, Morten’s own pair of rambunctious youngins have routinely attempted, but failed, to break the one he has at home; true to its ‘designed to last a lifetime, and more’ ethos, he has yet to replace any part of it even after a decade, and counting. Its quadruple modular concept results in a LEGO brick-like building system, making it super easy and quick to assemble; if you’re moving into a larger space, you can even upgrade it with additional
modules too.

As a product developer hired to build Vipp’s golden child of the new millennium, a challenging chapter that entailed nesting at the factory for three months and constructing its first showroom, it’s no wonder the V1 kitchen is Morten’s personal favourite. Having such rich, first-hand experience in taking the accessory brand to another level resulted in many productive but unexpected meetings with customers, allowing him to switch lanes from the engineering and design department to the commercial side of the business, optimising the supply chain to an extent where Vipp now distributes these kitchens through global partners like Hyphenate Holdings, based in Singapore and Malaysia. Discovering that there is a strong sense of awareness and appreciation for good quality at a good price in our local market, Vipp hopes that Malaysians will welcome it with the same enthusiasm as the Taiwanese, Chinese and South Koreans.

Apart from dreaming of a place where he could escape the urban chaos and reconnect with nature, without losing touch with the wonders of modern design, Kasper figured that it would make a lot more sense to shoot the bin’s lifestyle photographs using not just the brand’s own kitchen but its own home too, filling it with its own furniture, lighting and so forth; it’s been a prospering domino effect, to say the least. And so, the Sweden-based Vipp Shelter was erected in 2014, a prefab prototype cabin in the woods designed in collaboration with architecture studio Arcgency. Another instance of unexpected success, the overwhelming response by design enthusiasts who wanted to book a stay sparked its drastic pivot from a product to buy to a pioneering guesthouse. Initially rejecting this idea in order to keep it new and unused, the company soon realised that this opened up a new kind of immersive brand experience, made extra unique with breathtaking backdrops. From an Italian villa to an Andorran stonehouse, each of the seven all-inclusive guesthouses — with upcoming launches in Australia and Taiwan — are specifically tailored to its environment and culture, but united through classic Scandinavian touches and signature Vipp designs.

Speaking of new releases, Vipp generally sticks to the practice of introducing very few, but better, products every year. To help understand this decision, Morten references the jam experiment conducted by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper in 2000, a psychological study on consumer behaviour and the paradox of choice whereby the duo discovered that fewer choices yielded higher purchases as it allowed customers to focus better and make clearer decisions. Instead of following trends or seasons like the fashion industry does, “We introduce products when they are ready — not when the market expects them.” Following the “Good design never goes out of fashion” quote by Holger, chances of finding the very same products bought now decades into the future is sky-high, so one can always expand or replace something in the Vipp universe with ease. Apart from new guesthouses and furniture pieces, Morten teases that the brand has not made its last kitchen, and hopes to be able to showcase these new creations sometime next year.

From a one-man workshop to an independent, third generation-owned family design company with an enlarging portfolio that continues to knock it out of the park, Vipp has come a long way and it plans to stick around for the next 85 years or so. Apart from the aforementioned principles inculcated by its founder, the Egelund family’s bold aspirations, unconventional thinking as well as emphasis on organic growth that favours quality over quantity continues to inspire Morten with each passing day. “When we make a product, we’re always gonna make it last so that our grandkids will be around to see it, so we have to do it right,” he says, adding that “We are not targeting 100% of the market, we are catering to maybe just the 10% who can thoroughly appreciate the product, and its embedded values that we’ve talked about, but that’s good enough for us.”

vipp.com
thehabitatt.com
hyphenateholdings.com

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