NEW YORK CITY — A number of new products were on the trade show floor at this year’s Boutique Design New York conference, held over the weekend and into Monday at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. A record 20,000 attendees registered for the show this year with thousands of buyers and suppliers taking up several rooms of the convention center’s main floor.
Suppliers presented a number of new and upcoming products at the show. Among them:
Danao
“BDNY is always a launching pad for new products,” said Jennifer Lutton, VP hospitality & contract sales at Danao. This year, the company highlighted its Montauk collection of teak, aluminum and woven seating options and tables. The line uses a light woven fiber for support.
Danao’s Bond line, meanwhile, is more of a midcentury modern approach with curved lines and splayed legs. “It really is an approach that can be very simple,” Lutton said, noting that cushions are optional for seats in the line. “It all depends on what kind of lifestyle you need it for.”
The Laurel line of lounge chairs is a “fresh approach” to the popular synthetic weave, Lutton continued. “We have a much finer woven construction,” she said. “It’s all about the lines.”
Dedon
Outdoor furniture company Dedon launched the Scoora lantern by Hoffmann & Kahleyss Design. The company’s collaboration with the designers began when the Dedon team wanted to expand their offerings from furniture to lighting and accessories, “to think of outdoor very holistically,” Marketing Manager Nicole Ciminera said.
The lantern resembles an open shell and in a two-colorway open weave. An adjustable battery-operated lamp inside the shell can cast cool or warm light at various brightness levels. “Everything is hand woven using the Dedon fiber,” Ciminera added.
The Cirql Nu chair, designed by Werner Aisslinger, uses Dedon’s invert fiber in a co-extrusion process that combines two fiber colors and types into one strand, allowing for different hues and textures. “You get that kind of 3D effect when you're looking at the chair,” Ciminera said, pointing out a niche in the base that lets people move their feet back when they sit. The company displayed a lounge chair version on the trade show floor but also has dining chairs, footstools and even side tables. The chairs work with and without cushions.
Ethnicraft
Ethnicraft’s booth displayed several new and updated products, including the Swivel Tray side table that launched in September. The table has three tiers, the top of which can be moved as needed. The table can even serve as a nightstand, according to Anne-Marie Earl, the company’s U.S. communications manager.
Each tier of the table holds a removable tray. “The trays are interchangeable—and we have a massive tray collection to choose from, so you can mix and match to really make it personal and unique to your space,” Earl said.
Havwoods
Havwoods recently launched its Elegante Veneers collection, a line of thin wooden veneers available in 12 colors, 15 shapes and three construction styles. “These can be used on all sorts of surfaces like furniture, cabinetry, doors, walls, etc.,” said Anthony Scott, the company’s global product director. “You can actually bend them around columns.”
To color the veneer and create the 12 color options that customers can choose from, thin layers of Ayous—a subtropical timber from Cameroon—are bleached, stained and layered to replicate different grains or timber structures, including endangered ones. (Scott noted veneers that look like ebony, oak, walnut, and rosewood.) Once colored, the layers of veneer are molded and then CNC-machined to the requested profile shape.
The company also launched its Bog Oak flooring panels, developed from semi-fossilized trees that have been sourced from European lakes, rivers and peat bogs. “We extract the log out, and then use a proprietary drying method to then create unique flooring planks from it,” Scott said, noting that the company carbon dates each log to determine its age. The sample in the BDNY booth was about 4,000 years old, he estimated. “Pound for pound, there [are] more diamonds on the earth than there is bog oak, which makes it incredibly exclusive.”
The logs’ black color is the result of a complex chemical reaction with the tannins, and no two logs have the exact same color.
Heller
Heller tapped Icelandic designer (and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award winner) Hlynur Atlason of Atlason Studio to make what Heller COO Andrew McPhee called a “really, incredibly comfortable lounge chair.” Instead, Atlason delivered two models.
The Limbo chair’s name comes from its position as both an indoor and outdoor seating option. It has a wide backrest and angled seat made from post-consumer waste. The chair is fully recyclable.
Bluff, meanwhile, is inspired by the drifts and dunes created by onshore winds. The indoor/outdoor chair has drainage built into the seat and enough room for two people to sit side by side. Bluff is made using post-consumer recycled materials and, like Limbo, is 100 percent recyclable.
That recyclability is a key feature of both units, McPhee said, explaining that in most cases, using recycled content means a piece cannot be recycled further. But by using 25 percent post-agricultural waste (such as the plastic that can be seen covering farmlands) in the formula, the team made the pieces “infinitely” recyclable. They also are antimicrobial and antifungal.
The units, McPhee said, were initially 3D printed. “Once we've gotten that perfect, then we go to make a rotational mold,” he explained. “We manufacture those molds in Italy and then ship them over to the U.S. and produce these pieces in Wisconsin.” Each unit takes about an hour to process in the mold and comes out identical to the others in the line.
Magic Stone Mats
Doug Stein, CEO of Magic Stone Mats, had his company’s bathmat on display. The hard-surface bathmat is made of a diatomaceous earth, he explained, and is anti-slip. “And in a hotel environment, that's important,” he added.
The mat resists bacteria, mold and fungi and is also biodegradable, according to Stein. Beyond the health benefits, he said a stone mat can help hoteliers save money. “You don't have to send it to the laundry, you don't have to use gas, electricity … or detergents,” he said. “You never have to really clean it except with a little bit of soap and water.” Ultimately, Stein predicted a hotel could save about 80 percent of its normal bath mat costs over the unit’s two-year lifespan. “It's virtually unbreakable and very affordable,” he said.
The mats cost about $12 each for a hotel and can be branded with logos. While a traditional cloth bath mat costs significantly more, Stein said these mats only last for a few months before they need to be retired. Similarly, the cost of cleaning the cloth mats can add up over time, especially when factoring in all the different components of hotel laundry like labor, detergent, fabric softener, water, gas and electricity.
The company also can provide additional mats for the hotel’s gift shop to increase revenue, Stein added. “That's a nice win-win for the hotel as well.”
Moore & Giles
As of January 2024, two of Moore & Giles’ leather lines, Mont Blanc and Tribeca, will be carbon neutral. “It’s kind of a milestone achievement,” said Beverly McAuley, the company’s senior director of sustainability & education. “We have measured and reduced and offset the impact created by making leather from cradle to gate.”
To make the leather carbon neutral, the company’s leaders worked with third-party partners to determine what the carbon impact of leather production is, and then find ways at every step of the process to lower that impact, leveraging solar energy and other renewable sources.
Roca Bathrooms
Barcelona-based bathroom fixture company Roca is launching the Nu line of faucets inspired by the colors of the Mediterranean, particularly the greens, yellows and whites of Barcelona's architecture. The line is available in three different handle types—pin, stripe and dome.
The faucets also have cold-start technology that starts the water flowing at a cold temperature to help save energy, according to Raquel Huerta, the company’s U.S. marketing manager, and an integrated aerator limits the water flow.
Tarkett Hospitality
Tarkett premiered its new Dark Academia carpet collection on the trade show floor. “It's very dark and moody,” said Jeremy Clouse, regional VP of sales at Tarkett Hospitality. “We have some undertones with some lighter colors along with it, and we've also have some moss and nature kind of intertwined all into the design.”
Clouse expects the line’s broadloom options would be suited for public spaces. “The breadth of some of our patterns are very, very large,” he noted. The carpet tiles, on the other hand, would be more suitable for guestrooms.