For most furniture manufacturers, a showroom is a destination. Customers travel to it, whether at Chicago Design Week, a dealer showroom or a permanent brand space. Belgian outdoor furniture manufacturer Extremis decided to reverse that equation.
Instead of asking architects, designers and dealers to come to them, the company built a fully self-contained, 46-foot mobile showroom that will spend a year traveling across North America, bringing its products directly to customers. Called the Tour4Togetherness, the initiative reflects the company’s long-standing philosophy that its furniture exists to encourage human interaction.
“We call it the Tour4Togetherness,” said Thomas Wynants, who has the cheeky title of “Next Boss” at Extremis, the company his father, Dirk, founded in Poperinge, Belgium in 1994. “The slogan for our products is ‘Tools for Togetherness,’ so then it was easy to make the roadshow the Tour4Togetherness. Everything we make is intended to enhance the interaction between people.”
The project grew out of a simple realization. While photographs and presentations can introduce Extremis’ products, they rarely communicate the quality, engineering and durability that customers experience when they encounter them in person.
“We always noticed that if we gave a PowerPoint presentation or people had been on our website, they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, that all looks nice,'” Wynants said. “But when people see it in real life, they very often say, ‘Oh, now I get it.'”
The products’ clean, understated aesthetic can make them appear lighter than they actually are, he explained. “It’s actually very robust and heavy duty. As soon as you touch it, you kind of know that,” he said.
Years ago, that insight prompted Wynants and his wife to begin hauling products around the country in a trailer, unloading and assembling displays at each stop before presenting the collection themselves. It was an effective way to introduce the brand but also an exhausting one. “We would unpack the trailer, set up all the products, change clothes and present,” he said. “Now we took that to a next level.”
The original setup emphasized efficiency. A 16-foot trailer was packed with precision, carrying enough seating for roughly 30 people despite its modest footprint. But assembling and dismantling the display was physically demanding. The new mobile showroom dramatically changes the difficulty at each stop. Designed so a single operator can open or close it in about an hour, the trailer allows Extremis to host a morning event in one city and an afternoon event somewhere else the same day.
Creating that showroom required far more than modifying an existing trailer. Extremis started with a 46-foot gooseneck race car trailer. The extra interior height proved critical because it created enough usable floor area for visitors to experience the products comfortably.
Before construction even began, Wynants focused on finding the right person to operate the showroom. That person turned out to be his cousin, who had been living in Australia and had previous experience driving semi-trucks in Belgium. Once he agreed to participate, the project accelerated.
Wynants, who studied design, even returned to CAD software after more than a decade away from it to design much of the trailer himself. “I was first going to outsource it,” he admitted. “But my passion for RV design and all that kind of stuff—I thought, ‘Why don’t I do it myself?'”
Finding a builder proved more challenging. After sending requests for proposals to numerous trailer manufacturers, Extremis repeatedly encountered companies unwilling to move beyond conventional approaches. One design challenge involved creating a large, uninterrupted side opening that many builders believed required visible structural supports. After a broad search, Wynants found a company in its back yard that would take on the project.
“Nobody else except Branding Projex wanted to do that one door in one piece,” Wynants said. “Most of them were just not open to think beyond what they had done before.”
Branding Projex is based in Grand Rapids, not far from the Extremis headquarters in North America. Thirty minutes after making the initial call, representatives were visiting Extremis, beginning a collaboration that ultimately produced the finished showroom.
Unlike traditional product trailers, which function primarily as storage and transportation, Extremis’ new vehicle operates as a genuine showroom experience.
“I think we can really call it a mobile showroom,” Wynants said. “We have a hosting experience just like any showroom at THE MART would do. The only difference is that we don’t need to mobilize people. We take the showroom to them.”
That distinction is important. Rather than asking designers and dealers to travel, Extremis brings the experience directly to offices, dealerships and design firms. The trailer also functions almost entirely off-grid. Equipped with rooftop solar panels, battery storage, freshwater tanks, gray and black water systems, a dishwasher, shower and restroom, the showroom can operate independently for extended periods.
During Fulton Market Design Days, where it was parked in the middle of Fulton Market, the system exceeded expectations. “We had two fridges running. We had a big stereo system. We had all the lights on,” Wynants said. “The battery level never dropped under 70%.”
The self-contained approach has proven equally valuable for life on the road. The trailer driver didn’t think it needed a toilet. But Wynants insisted and the driver is now grateful.
Following its debut during Chicago Design Week, the Tour4Togetherness immediately began traveling from market to market. Within its first three weeks, the showroom averaged roughly seven stops each week. Success, however, is measured differently than at a traditional trade show. It’s more about making meaningful connections rather than attracting huge crowds.
That philosophy aligns with the nature of Extremis’ products, whose design solutions often reveal themselves only through personal demonstration. “There’s more than meets the eye,” Wynants said. “That shape accidentally looks good, but it’s not because it looks good that we did it that way. It’s because it actually fulfills a function.”
Many of the tour’s most successful events begin before the workday starts. Whenever possible, the trailer parks overnight at a dealer or architecture firm. By morning, coffee and croissants are waiting outside before employees even enter the building. “We don’t even have to try to get them out of the office. We catch them before they go in,” he said.
The strategy acknowledges changing workplace habits and busy schedules while making it easier for design professionals to engage with the brand.
The year-long itinerary will eventually take the showroom across Canada, through the western United States, down the West Coast and into warmer southern states before returning north in the spring. By the end of the journey, Extremis expects to have visited virtually every market where it has dealer representation.
For Wynants, the trailer represents more than an inventive marketing tool. It embodies the company’s central belief that meaningful design begins with bringing people together. Rather than waiting for customers to discover its products in a permanent showroom, Extremis has built a showroom that travels thousands of miles to create those connections itself.