A DESIGN JOURNEYBehind The Bend
On Wednesday we told you all about our summer chock full of design and creativity with our intern dream team. Now the question remains, what do we do with all of these new designs? The design process truly is only the first step in the furniture manufacturing process. Well, the answer is simple and very Bend. We go on a journey of course, but this journey will be very different than the one we went on to shoot our first catalog. This journey will have us traveling a little bit further.
Early next week, a small Bend Team, lead by our founder Gaurav Nanda, will board a plane to the South Pacific. Our first stop, Australia. We are going to spend a week in Sydney, with our awesome Australian distributor Own World. While there, we are taking part in a tradeshow, and doing some meet and greets with the local design community. We genuinely couldn’t be more excited about this first leg of the trip. We love our Australian friends and can’t wait to put faces to the names that we work with so often. Our next stop, Indonesia. In Indonesia we are planning to take in the history, culture and the local design community. There are so many incredible products that come out of that area; both from a local craft and an international manufacturing stand point. When looking for new people to work with, we feel it’s important to visit in person and see how the facilities are run. We really love to support local artisans all around the world, but fair trade and positive working conditions are things that are very important to us.
After spending a week or so traveling around the islands of Indonesia, we jump to another cluster of islands known as the Philippines. We have to admit, this part of the trip is more for fun in the sun and some under water adventures, but who knows what we’ll find along the way. There is some great manufacturing that happens there as well, but we hear the beaches are some of the best in the world.
Our final stop on our Bend Design Journey is China, where we will be visiting our current factory. Our team in China has truly become an extension of our family. We are excited to see them, catch-up and get some hard work done.
This journey is going to be quite an adventure and we hope that you will be along for the ride. We will be posting on all of our social media channels and blogging everywhere we can find WIFI all along the way. We truly love what we do and really love sharing our experiences and process with you. Until next week, we hope you have a great weekend and we’ll catch you down-under.
