Prominent among Chicago’s River North boutiques and galleries is international design house Ligne Roset. Their store presides over the intersection of Wells and Hubbard, an easy walk two blocks north of the Merchandise Mart.
This convenience had NeoCon 2017 attendees frequenting events at the freshly renovated Ligne Roset showroom, where products under the family name Roset share a lineage extending from the times of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency.
Unknown to most visiting Ligne Roset that week was the presence of the founder’s great-great-grandson. Named for the man who started the family business in 1860, Antoine Roset circulated among visitors, appearing to most as an exceptionally knowledgeable Ligne Roset representative.
The astute among those he encountered asked about his relationship to the business. “I’m a shareholder” is all he told them.
Though factual, that answer simplifies Mr. Roset’s involvement with the company. As Executive Vice President –North and South America, Mr. Roset positions the formidable Ligne Roset Contracts offering for the Americas commercial market. As a member of the firm’s fifth generation of family management, he shapes the firm’s long established value proposition for the present-day habits of modern audiences.
Beyond those roles, Mr. Roset crisscrosses North America, visiting Ligne Roset stores, meeting clients and serving as an extemporaneous spokesman for original design.
While seated in a quieter corner of a Ligne Roset Chicago showroom abuzz with visitors, Mr. Roset discusses a family business spanning five generations with the enthusiasm of a startup entrepreneur. He does so at an hour on the last day of NeoCon when most exhibitors are already airport-bound. “We design and manufacture products for everyday use,” said Mr. Roset. “We believe that design makes day-to-day products nicer and better.” He adds, “We are a design company.”
The rise of Ligne Roset from a small wood products factory in Montagnieu, France, about an hour’s drive east of Lyon, to an international firm with outposts in the famous design districts of the world came from growth at a deliberate pace.
“We do not trust fast growth,” said Mr. Roset. “Growing too fast can bring a loss of competence.”
An old philosophy, or a practice right for the times?
Ask Jason Fried, the developer and entrepreneur responsible for Basecamp and a host of best-selling productivity tools: “I’m a fan of slow, consistent growth. I feel that is the healthiest way to grow.”
Mr. Fried told Inc. Magazine’s Laura Montini in an August 2014 interview that he changed the vision of his business to maintain a high level of quality. He cited the difficulty in executing at a high level of quality in his decision to scale back company growth.
Getting the details precisely right on every product is the norm in the high-end marketplace where Ligne Roset thrives. Building everything in facilities clustered along the Rhône River in the French countryside helps. No matter where on the globe a furniture order ships, manufacturing happens in Ligne Roset’s Briord factory, less than 5 kilometers from where everything started in Montagnieu.
“Our headquarters building is on the same site as our factory,” said Mr. Roset. If a question arises, the management team has but a two-minute walk to the factory floor. The arrangement is especially practical when building products from parts that are individual and unique to each collection.
“We want ultimate flexibility and making everything from scratch fits us,” said Mr. Roset. “We have no platforms or common parts among the products we make, so common structures do not constrain us.”
Those familiar with Ligne Roset might say this is how they make seating such as the Ploum sofa, whose sitting comfort is an ethereal experience.
Or how a Togo lounge configuration becomes a family inheritance now serving a third generation with the same comfort and style as when it was new in 1974. A family visiting Ottawa’s Ligne Roset store shared that story.
“Is it our mistake to make things that are too good?” asks Mr. Roset. “Are our products too strong, too sustainable?”
Now more than ever might be the right time for products of substance that endure. Take the iconic Togo lounge series as an example. Ligne Roset manufactures Togo the same way today as it did 43 years ago.
“I believe that consumers have changed, and the U.S. is starting to realize it, too, that buying for the sake of buying is over.” Mr. Roset sees opportunities for their product line to grow as consumers buy less and buy better.
What Ligne Roset pursues compares roughly to the “Premium Strategy” proffered by Vincent Bastien in 2015 for Entrepreneur Magazine’s article “Marketing to a High-End Consumer.” The author summarizes this strategy as one of proving the best value within a category, where comparisons show that the most affordable product might be one whose price is higher.
“Consumers want a smarter way to purchase, where they may wait a little longer to get a better product that will last a long time.” He adds that consumers coming to Ligne Roset are “super well-educated” about products.
“We are here to help consumers make purchases,” said Mr. Roset, adding that they “don’t want to tell someone else what to do, but understanding how they want to use our furniture helps us suggest good choices.” For example, what upholsteries suit an active household with dogs and children, or when there are better choices than aniline leather for sunny southern exposures.
Service, design and durability propelled Ligne Roset’s lasting successes in Europe and other markets, whereas in the United States the same attributes relegate the firm to the upper price brackets.
“We are high-end, but we are not luxury,” said Mr. Roset. “Luxury is an overused and misused category that relates to very specific brands with very limited access by the general population.”
Mr. Roset says new clients can start their Ligne Roset collections when it is affordable to them. “We have $200 items designed and produced for their purposes as well as anything else we make, opening the possibility for some to become a Ligne Roset client sooner, rather than later.”
For others, Mr. Roset has patience. “It is a matter of culture, of being ready, and if someone is not ready now, that’s fine,” said Mr. Roset. He mused that “they might buy products elsewhere, but I’ll see them again in a few years.”
What makes Mr. Roset so confident? “Ligne Roset offers real products.” He defines a real product as one born of a designer’s thoughtful exploration of possibilities expressed in its look and feel, its purpose and versatility, and how much joy it creates in everyday use.
“We then do our best to make this product what the designer envisioned, which sometimes means challenging our processes and ourselves to make it happen.”
Mr. Roset says it is the company’s passion for design that leads management to entertain product design ideas others might reject for reasons of complexity or sales potential. “We will invest in the effort to see if a product can be made and be something people will like. If some do and some don’t, that’s fine.”
To create is the essential thing for Ligne Roset. “Sometimes a designer brings us something we like, and we want to see if we can do it,” said Mr. Roset.
Relationships have a role in creating. Mr. Roset explains that “no matter how terrific a design might be, it won’t go very far here unless we develop a good relationship with the designer.” He said the human element is significant and relationships ease the process.
Sadly, there is no easy process for quashing manufacturers who knock-off the products of Ligne Roset and other original-design firms.
“We stand by our designers,” said Mr. Roset. The company pursues legal remedies where possible and leads the industry in raising awareness. Ligne Roset is a charter member of Be Original, a non-profit organization established to inform, educate and influence the public about the value of original design.
At a recent Be Original panel discussion before an audience of designers and specifiers, Mr. Roset shared insights into Ligne Roset’s product development, primarily that the best defense against knock-offs is creativity.
“The main business concern of knock-off firms is the bottom line.” Complicated designs and intricate structures are harder to copy. Mr. Roset added that “new functions, shapes, materials make our products original, as does the complexity of the designs we choose to manufacture.”
Mr. Roset described the inherent complexity of the Togo Lounge collection to David Keeps of the Los Angeles Times for an April 2011 article about original designs versus copies. Whereas a knock-off unit commonly has one piece of foam, the original from Ligne Roset uses “more than ten different pieces with different densities.”
To upholster Togo requires advanced know-how. Mr. Roset was quoted in the article saying, at the time, just five members of the upholstery team were best qualified at getting the tufting’s look and feel exactly right.
The stories about how designs come to be, of journeys from inspiration’s spark to a fully realized product in everyday use, resonate among the clientele Ligne Roset attracts. Only real products, from original-design firms, have such stories.
Telling and retelling these stories over time creates legacy, an asset expected from a firm such as Ligne Roset.
Stewarding this legacy comes from a different business perspective, where the responsible individuals had family titles of father, uncle, cousin, brother before they had business titles.
“The business is in the family, and the family is in the business,” said Mr. Roset. He remembers how the table conversations at family gatherings drifted into and out of shop talk, going to the factories as a child and accepting how time influences one’s stewardship of an organization.
Though Mr. Roset certainly expects a long life, he believes his years of influence are short in comparison with time Ligne Roset has been in business. “We have the same quarterly reports and balance sheets as any business except that our planning horizon isn’t three months or 12 months,” he said. “It’s a generation.”
“My father and his father before him looked ahead to my generation, and asked themselves what sort of company would they be leaving for us,” said Mr. Roset. “In planning for the company now, I consider what my generation will leave to our children.”
As makers, the family Roset founded a company to last for generations, sought designers with unique perspectives and committed to style and durability in all their products.
Beyond the tangible, Antoine Roset himself explained a non-obvious but desirable feature within each Ligne Roset product that only appears when a client experiences it firsthand.
“The way you use your sofa, bed or cabinets; the way you live in your home; that’s your life,” said Mr. Roset. “We just try making it better: when you sit, you’ll be comfortable; when you rest, you will sleep well; when you look at your cabinetry, you will be happy.”
One might conclude this transference is the overflowing joy from five generations of passion in making art for everyday living.
At press time and before the official announcement, Roset USA sent word that a new Executive Vice President for the Americas, Simone Vingerhoets, takes over in January 2018, when Antione Roset moves back to headquarters in France. There, Mr. Roset will join his father, uncle, and cousin in leading the company.