Sixinch Gets 'Gnarly' with Colorful, Creative Furniture
Imagine lounging in a Gnarly chair with your feet kicked up on an Eggy, snapping a selfie and posting it to social media with a simple message – “Recharging in our cool company lounge area” with a smiley face emoji.
That’s the type of branding designers say companies need to consider when designing space these days, particularly when trying to recruit young talent. “Every office is almost an Instagrammable moment,” Neil Schneider, design director at Chicago-based IA Interior Architects, told a crowd gathered in a theater at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.
Creating distinctive space to collaborative or lounge is a big a part of that branding. “We own that kind of segment,” boasted Josh Taylor, director of marketing for Sixinch, during NeoCon, one of the largest commercial design confabs in the world.
Sixinch, which the company says refers to the distance between your ears, was founded in Belgium by Pieter Jamart and Michel Sels. They came to the U.S. in 2013 and teamed up with Weiland Designs, a Goshen, Indiana, company that makes furniture as well as seats for the aviation and automotive industry.
“We produce products that range in price form a couple of hundred dollars to thousands,” Taylor said. “It depends on the use.”
The Gnarly chair is one of the company’s newest products. A low-back version sells for $2,400 and the high back sells for $2,700. The ones sitting in the company’s year-old permanent showroom at the Mart are covered in a wild fabric of colorful, diverse mishmash images.
“We ran over the top” with that design, Taylor said. “But we can upholstery them anyway anyone wants.”
Eggy is the actual name of the hot pink round, knobby poufs that visitors can sit on to play old video games such as Pac-Man. It’s such a new product for Sixinch wasn’t on the company’s website yet. Taylor said the piece that’s sprayed with a polyurethane coating costs $2,500.
The company’s Mart showroom, perhaps one of the more colorful ones there, also features its other new product, a long, wavy, tiered seating product that is modular. Tiered seating is a key feature designers point to for creating collaborative space that draws employees together.
Taylor said the pieces can be easily moved around and different configurations created. If one section gets ruined, you don't have to replace the whole thing, just the one piece.
A lot of Sixinch’s furniture products feature wavy or undulating blocks modeled together. The company calls them “landscapes." And they come in many different colors. “Anything that is coated can go indoor or out,” Taylor said.
“A lot of universities have our stuff,” he said. But a variety of technology companies, including Apple and Oracle, own Sixinch furniture as well.
