Three H isn’t the kind of furniture company that makes new products simply for the sake of making them. It is thoughtful about its design and thoughtful about what it introduces. It’s a company that designs with intent and with the human experience in mind.
Perhaps this pragmatic approach to furniture design comes from its experienced leadership team. Perhaps it comes from the community it calls home, New Liskeard, or what is now called Temiskaming Shores, a five hour drive due north from Toronto in the heart of the Canadian Great White North.
Regardless, the beneficiaries of Three H’s approach are its growing number of customers, who appreciate the company’s aim to redefine laminate furniture by emphasizing quality and innovation.
If you are a U.S. designer and don’t know the brand, that’s OK. The company began a rebranding and strategic growth plan a few years ago that established an ambitious vision for the company, which includes boosting the brand’s profile in the U.S. Three H has long been in the U.S. market and has had pockets of strength, but it is just now beginning to truly promote the brand.
“If we are going to live up to the potential that we see in the company and achieve the goals that we set out to achieve, we needed to establish a much stronger voice,” said Chris Binnendyk, the company’s chief executive officer and majority owner who spent the first two decades of his career at Allseating. “Our leadership team profoundly believes that our brand, because of the wonderful attributes of our company, can be a source of competitive advantage.”
Binnendyk started by building a strong leadership team. Talke Krauskopf joined the company as Vice President of Marketing. And in January, Lee Fletcher joined as Vice President of Product Design. Krauskopf is leading the charge on rebranding and Fletcher has already made transformative contributions to the company’s design philosophy, guiding the development of innovative and sustainable workspace products, including its new Hudson Private Office Collection previewed at NeoCon 2024.
The goal of the company is to redefine laminate furniture. Laminate furniture is a growing category in the industry that is better known for its lower cost rather than its higher design.
“The mission that we have embarked on is that we want our customers to think differently about laminate furniture,” said Binnendyk. “Historically, it has been seen as a low cost alternative to veneer furniture with negative connotations around quality and innovation in particular. And we think there’s an opportunity to completely redefine the way people think about laminate furniture. We think that there’s an opportunity to be the leader in that part of this category.”
Much of the strategy today is being driven by the company’s history and its connection to its home.
Many consider Toronto to be a northern city, but Temiskaming Shores, the picturesque, close-knit community on the shore of Lake Temiskaming is a five hour drive further north still. In its early days, the remoteness of the company made connectivity to the industry difficult. Technology has leveled the playing field. The company now considers its location an asset since the furniture built there is a reflection of the people who create it and the place where it is made. People who work for Three H tend to stay with the company a long time and 90% of its employees live within 10 miles of the factory.
The company was founded by three men, Heinz Dittmann, Helmut Moeltner, and Helmer Pedersen, all of whose names began with H and all with millworker or furniture building experience. Three H was originally founded as a residential furniture maker. The company pivoted toward the home office in 1996 and turned to commercial business in 2004.
Laminate furniture is an extremely competitive segment. Three H benefits from its category focus, said Binnendyk. Laminate furniture is its only focus and that’s what it wants to be known for.
Thoughtful design is another pillar of the company’s growth plans. Fletcher has been an industrial designer working in the category for 25 years. He was a designer on staff with Teknion until about 2005, after which he ran an independent design studio. “One of the things — a thread that I would try and pull through all the work I was doing — was this idea of thoughtfulness. One of the reasons I was really happy to join Three H was there was great alignment,” he said.
Thoughtful design comes from focusing on the smallest detail, said Fletcher. Furniture needs to have beautiful composition and material and it needs to be able to catch someone’s attention. But beyond the aesthetics, it must focus on the details; it must be designed with intent.
“When you sit down at your desk, is there somewhere to put your bag? Is there somewhere to naturally plug your phone and can you hang your coat up somewhere? It was always really important for me that I think about someone sitting here when I’m developing furniture. That was very much aligned with the vision that Chris and the team has for Three H,” he said.
Designing things to be different for its own sake doesn’t matter, said Fletcher. It needs to have a meaningful difference. It needs to be distinct and be designed with intent. Design at Three H begins with connecting the furniture to the people using it; dovetailing into human experience.
Three H already has a strong foundation of beautifully designed products, Fletcher said. Some of those foundational pieces need tweaking and others need to be recategorized. He said he is also trying to create connectivity and cross-product relationships — to create products that are distinct, but can be placed together on a project in a way that makes sense.
Customer service has been a hallmark of the company since it was founded, said Binnendyk. It pervades the whole culture of the company and there’s a passion to do right by the customer, a sense of urgency. So Three H built customer service in as a core element of the brand. That includes servicing its dealer network. Three H wants to not only provide beautiful, long-lasting furniture to its customers, but also help dealers become more profitable in the process.
Hudson by Three H redefines the private office with design to make spaces work harder, combining scalable design with striking architectural forms to meet diverse modern office needs. Designed by Fletcher, Hudson uses rectilinear architectural forms to create individual pieces that blend into tailored compositions, adding depth and character, a personal touch to commercial spaces.
Three H research found that one of the primary reasons customers replace a boardroom table is the look and feel of its materials and finishes. KYNDE conference table tops and bases are clad in thin pieces of material that can be easily replaced without swapping out the entire table.
From a design standpoint, Three H is at the beginning of a new era, especially with the addition of Fletcher leading product design. “I think it conveys our commitment to design and to making our product portfolio unique and to stand out in our category,” said Binnendyk.
Three H is just getting started, even through it has been in business for more than 50 years. It is repositioning itself in the industry and changing the way we look at laminate furniture.