Business news: Italian designer Stefano Giovannoni has set up a new internet-based plastic furniture brand that he hopes will overcome the "irreconcilable gap" between physical and online retail.
Giovannoni will launch the Italian company, named Qeeboo, during Milan design week next month.
Majority-owned by the designer and backed by a Hong Kong investor, the brand will focus on affordable products that will be primarily sold online and distributed directly to customers.
"It will be not only a completely innovative business model based on web sales in order to reach a wider audience with affordable price," he told Dezeen, "but also a totally different company, simplifying the process based on a minimum structure, and outsourcing logistics and distribution." The Milan-based designer believes that the current approach to retail, where many furniture companies use e-commerce as a "complementary channel" to physical stores, is outdated. Last year he told Dezeen that most design brands will disappear within five year.
"For traditional companies there is an irreconcilable gap between retail and web sales," said Giovannoni. "While, in our case, we want to establish a more honest relationship with the retail system based on transparency and openness."
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