Carpooling with Marcus, Mette and Rolf
Driving up to the curb to pick up Mette and Rolf Hay, is Marcus Engman, Head of Design at IKEA. The design duo behind the Danish company HAY are keen to talk about the YPPERLIG collection, their collaboration with IKEA.
Riding around in a blue Volvo, the trio discusses the latest sample of the small shell sofa, a piece in the YPPERLIG collection. “It is not easy to do, it takes some skills in the factory,” explains Rolf from the backseat. The structure of the sofa is thin, but with a clever plastic shell, it’s both flexible and comfortable.
Mette asks Marcus when IKEA seriously started to think about a possible collaboration: “I think you were on the shortlist from the very beginning,” he says with a hint of a smile. Technically HAY is seen as a competitor to IKEA due to its strong brand image.
For HAY the collaboration was a challenge because of the scale of production. “We cannot fail. The scale is simply too big”, Rolf says. On the upside, HAY will now meet people on a much bigger and broader scale.
“We were very aware that we had to put the right people on the project, and put in all of our energy for a long period of time. And we did,” says Rolf.
Estimated launch of YPPERLIG is October 2017.
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