Design Leaders Join Forces: Landscape Forms to Acquire Loll Designs
With excitement about the tremendous synergies the development brings, Landscape Forms announced the acquisition of Duluth, MN-based Loll Designs.
“We’ve been working together for several years co-developing new solutions to enhance the enjoyment of outdoor spaces. Coming together in a more formal way feels like a natural evolution in an already very successful relationship. ” says Landscape Forms CEO Marjorie Simmons. “Our tenets as a company are design, culture and craft, and in Loll Designs we’ve discovered a like-minded organization. We’re aligned with each other, and share a mission. It’s very exciting to consider what this combined team can accomplish.”
Loll Designs is an award-winning designer and manufacturer of spirited, robust and highly-sustainable outdoor furniture, and shares a distinctly design-forward ethos with Landscape Forms. It is recognized worldwide for its contemporary designs and innovative use of recycled plastic – primarily from single-use milk jugs – in their products. “Our furniture is for people who are looking for clean design from a company with a high level of environmental and social consciousness,” says Loll CEO Greg Benson. “This has been our guiding principle and creative inspiration from day one. Landscape Forms shares these and many other values we care about, and will be a great partner as we take Loll to the next level.” Benson will continue as President and Creative Director of Loll and become an integral member of the executive leadership team at Landscape Forms after the acquisition.
Loll, which has relationships with Design Within Reach, Room & Board and other specialty retailers throughout the U.S. and the world, has also built a successful direct-to-consumer e-commerce business. The company will add more than eighty “extremely talented new team members, and a wonderful location in Duluth, Minnesota” to Landscape Forms, Simmons says.
Simmons adds that synergies with Loll extend to a shared commitment to sustainability. “Sustainability is foundational to who we are today and what we aspire to become in the future,” she says. “It’s vital and therefore a top priority. We share a passion for the environment, another way we’re an ideal match.”
Landscape Forms’ acquisition of Loll Designs is expected to be completed by December 31, 2020, and as Simmons says, “will be an exciting and, dynamic new chapter in our combined journey as we move boldly forward.”
Landscape Forms is North America’s leading designer and manufacturer of high-design solutions for outdoor site furniture, advanced LED lighting, structures, and custom environments. For more than fifty years it has been the design and quality standard for landscape designers, architects and urban planners.
About Landscape Forms
Landscape Forms is the industry leader in integrated collections of high-design site furniture, structures, accessories, and advanced LED lighting. Since its founding in 1969 Landscape Forms has earned a reputation for excellent design, high quality products and exceptional service. The company is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with manufacturing facilities in Kalamazoo and Phoenix, Arizona, and sales representatives throughout North America, South America, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Asia. Landscape Forms collaborates with renowned industrial designers and consultancies, landscape architects, and architects to design and develop integrated collections of products that address emerging needs and help create a sense of place. Additionally, the company has formed global marketing partnerships with select companies that share its commitment to design. Landscape Forms has an installed base of products around the world. Clients include municipalities, transit centers, corporate, college and health care campuses; and familiar brand leaders such as Harvard University, Linked In, New York Central Park Conservancy, Bryant Park, Google, Coca Cola, Oculus, U.S. Tennis Association (USTA), Nike, National Museum of African American History (Washington, D.C.), Barclays Center, Adidas, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Microsoft, and Uber. We’ve been named one of the Best Workplaces in Manufacturing & Production for 2020 by Fortune magazine, Michigan Manufacturer of the Year for 2020 by the Michigan Manufacturers Association, and by 269 Magazine as one of Southwest Michigan’s Wonderful Workplaces.
About Loll Designs
Loll Designs makes outdoor furniture for the “modern lollygagger,” people who play hard, work hard, relax hard, and appreciate the outdoors. The founders of Loll Designs joined forces in 1997 as TrueRide, designing municipal skate parks around the world. They became adept at turning recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE), better known as #2 plastic, into large-scale sculptural skate ramps. Then, as a way to repurpose excess skate ramp material and with their expertise in 3D design, they evolved from skate parks to Epicurean, a successful line of kitchen accessories, in 2003, and Loll Designs in 2006, with its debut of an Adirondack chair that displayed a playful but modern, refined aesthetic. Loll Designs has been recognized for excellence in design and a strong commitment to sustainability with four Good Design Awards, a Green Dot Award, Time magazine Green Design 100 Awards, and the New York House Innovative Green Award. Loll Designs is based in Duluth, Minnesota.
