We’re often asked how we go about designing a new range of children’s furniture. From a family history steeped in furniture design and crafting, the small team at Little Folks Furniture are expert children’s furniture designer-crafters. This means that every piece of timber is sourced by us, and every single joint is designed by us. This may sound extreme, but it’s how we ensure that our furniture really is top notch, (and stays that way!) No outsourcing of design or quality control means that we can maintain our high standards because we understand and have full control over every step in the design process.
So here’s how we do it, (in a nutshell!)
1. It starts with a sketch …
Chris and Stephen, our mastermind design team, spend hours of time researching and conducting market research. They use their design and manufacturing experience to sketch out and technically design the specification of each Little Folks Furniture product.
2. We find high quality, sustainably sourced timbers.
Once the product has been designed, the materials are sourced. This is where the sourcing and quality control expert, Saso comes in. Saso is stationed in Europe where he can keep a close eye on the factories who manufacture our designs, and he also spends a lot of time looking into new supplies of timber. Manufacturing with timber from managed forests is of paramount importance to us, because our company is intrinsically all about using beautiful and sustainable timbers.
3. We craft our new furniture.
After a little to-ing and fro-ing between designing the technical part of the product as well as well as how it looks, we’re ready to brief the factory on producing our new design. We hand select our factories and only work with those who use timbers from managed forests. The timbers need time to dry out before they can be used to create our beds. Saso manages the production through the factories and in this way he can ensure rigorous QC checks too.
4. Testing, testing…
We’re serious about safety. So, we’ve built our very own testing house at our HQ. Tilly the test house can often be seen bish, bash and boshing our furniture. Stephen, our technical and safety manager will run tests before we launch a new product, and then often throughout its lifecycle. This is to ensure that the standards we specify are being followed by the factories.
5. Flash, bang wallop.
Yep, you’ve guessed it. We are lucky enough to have our very own photographic studio. Once the production sample has passed its safety and QC checks, we know that we need to get a decent photograph or two in order to launch it to you lovely lot! The photographic process can be quite lengthy, and starts with a set design and a moodboard, which then progresses to set build and of course the final photo shoot with the picture perfect snap for our website launch.
6. Home sweet home.
(Photo courtesy of Andrew Henry Interiors, who designed this gorgeous childrens room that features our Edit single bed).
We love seeing photos of our furniture designs in our customer homes, and it’s wonderful when we see our little folks getting so much joy from their new beds!
Hopefully this has given you a little snapshot into the behind the scenes of a product launch at Little Folks Furniture. Let us know what you think, and if you have some snaps of your own little Folks Furniture products, please do send them in, we love to see them!
Stay tuned for more ‘behind-the-scenes’.
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