Steelform

[Louis]

Greetings
Can anyone share experiences ordering from steelform.com ?
I wish to purchase Jacobsen chairs, and they are much cheaper than
traditionnal retail in Paris.
Thanks for your answers.
Louis

[Rik Krispijn]

Dear Louis,

 

You should read the following article first.

 

With kind regards,
DesignMatcher.com

 

Rik Krispijn
Editor

 

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Copycat, Copycat
Furniture Makers Are Fighting Knockoffs

 

It is nearly impossible to walk around any large city these days without running into street vendors doing a brisk trade in knockoff designer handbags, sunglasses and watches. But high-end fashion accessories are not the only counterfeits flooding the marketplace. Street merchants have yet to offer copies of tables, chairs, rugs and fabrics from the biggest names in home furnishings. However, unauthorized reproductions are definitely out there, from the showrooms of rival designers to department and specialty stores, from catalogues and the Internet to slick shelter magazines.

So pervasive is the problem that the home division of the 80-year-old Herman Miller Inc. -- maker of iconic mid-century designs by such giants as Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi and George Nelson -- has mounted a traveling show called "Get Real." Its aim is to draw attention to the problem of purloined design and to educate consumers about the value of buying the real thing, even if it costs far more than the knockoff. The exhibit is currently at the Daniel Donnelly Modern Design Studio in Alexandria, which carries mid-century originals and authorized reproductions, including those by Herman Miller. In early September, it moves to the Museum of Modern Art retail shop in New York.

"This is a big problem," says Marg Mojzak, Herman Miller senior marketing manager. Officials estimate that the Zeeland, Mich., company loses millions of dollars a year to knockoffs. And the fallout is not just financial, Mojzak says. Knockoffs also tarnish the firm's reputation for quality.

"Our customer service department probably gets two or three calls a week about a problem with a product people think came from Herman Miller. They'll say, 'I'm calling because the pneumatic tilt on my Eames lounge chair doesn't work.' We've never made it with a pneumatic tilt."

But not all cases of disputed design are open and shut. Copyists often contend that their products -- which might vary slightly in form, material or color -- are "inspired by" or "derived from" rather than duplicated exactly from an original: a table leg just a bit wider or longer, a sleek chair in fabric rather than leather.

In some cases, once-protected designs by famous masters may now be in the public domain, open to copying by anyone. "Knockoffs have been a fact of life in the furniture business since Thomas Chippendale knocked off the Chinese -- probably before," wrote Mark McMenamin, a senior editor at InFurniture, a monthly industry trend magazine, last September.

Moreover, said McMenamin in an interview, many consumers don't really care if they are buying a knockoff. "There is a very small slice of Architectural Digest readers who will only buy the Herman Miller, the Henredon," he said. "But most people, if they can get a break on the price, will."

The new "Get Real" campaign is hardly the first time the interior design industry has fought back. Since 1990, dozens of individuals and companies have banded together to fight knockoffs under the aegis of a group called the Foundation for Design Integrity.

"It was easier to do it collectively," said Los Angeles designer Sally Sirkin Lewis, a driving force behind the group. "We had some very good names at the beginning. We were all reputable firms who were complaining." Early successes frightened other knockoff artists, "especially when they read about lawsuits going against them." Her own experience -- and that of her company, J. Robert Scott Inc. -- illustrates the scope of the problem over the decades. Several years ago, she went after a top global hotel after noticing fakes of her textiles on a bed in Atlanta; the offenders had to destroy fabric and pay her undisclosed damages. Ditto for the national purveyor of pricey gadgets, which settled after Lewis noticed a Chinese-made knockoff of one of her mirrors in its catalogue, she said. Equally galling was seeing her distinctively striped 1980s chair attributed to a competitor in ID, the slick international design magazine. After sending the editor documents proving that she, not the rival, created the piece, the magazine ran photos of both chairs, Lewis said. "What bothered me was this was one of our very important trade magazines, and they wouldn't get behind me," she said.

Five years ago, Herman Miller sued Palazzetti, a chain of U.S. stores selling an Italian-made Eames chair knockoff along with their reproductions of pieces by such modernist masters as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Eileen Gray. Only Herman Miller has license rights in this country to use the Eames name.

"We weren't able to stop them from producing it, but they really pulled back considerably from advertising it" as an Eames chair, said Mojzak, adding that the case was settled out of court in Detroit. Palazzetti no longer has U.S. stores, but does sell other designers' "modern classics" on the Internet and by telephone, said Tonia Gotsis, manager of Palazzetti Express, a sister company with an office in Greenwich, Conn. The Eames lounge chair, however, is not among those offerings, she said. "That's Herman Miller. We do not sell Charles Eames any more." In May, Herman Miller scored another victory by obtaining trademark "trade dress" protection from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for two of its most celebrated pieces: the 1956 Eames wood and leather lounge chair with ottoman and Noguchi's 1944 glass and wood coffee table.

That means the company can take legal action against those whose copies merely evoke, not just faithfully duplicate, the originals. "It's like the Coca-Cola bottle. It's the same kind of protection," Mojzak said.

The financial toll that imitations inflict on the furniture industry may be hard to calculate, but almost no one -- from individuals to major companies -- is immune.

When designers encounter knockoffs, their lawyers usually demand the copyists cease sales or production, destroy existing stock, reveal the names of suppliers and pay monetary damages. Some cases go to trial; others are settled out of court with the terms remaining confidential.

Combating knockoffs may be tedious and costly, but it is essential, said Manfred Scheller, president of New York-based Donghia Furniture/Textiles Ltd., founded by the late Angelo Donghia.

"We have pursued numerous copyists all the way from single interior designers -- who tried to cheat by taking a [showroom catalogue] tearsheet with a picture and dimensions to an upholstery shop to have it made -- to retailers like May Co. department stores, that would buy a Donghia chair that's become a signature, like the Luciano. They would be in cahoots with some North Carolina manufacturer who would offer them thousands to be sold at $399 each, while ours were sold [wholesale] to the trade for $2,500 plus fabric."

As evidence, the design house produced pictures of its Luciano chair and a Boston Globe ad for Filene's (owned by the May Department Stores Co.) touting a "Donghia Tailored Accent Chair." Donghia won that case in the late 1990s, with the settlement remaining confidential. The St. Louis-based chain had no comment, said Sharon Bateman, May's corporate communications vice president: "According to the terms of the settlement, we cannot discuss the case. Both parties are precluded from talking about it."

Donghia now plans to take aim at Crate & Barrel, whose fall catalogue cover features a $499 armless Jacques chair that Scheller says looks too much like Donghia's $1,050 Villa chair from 1998. "We happen to have a design patent on our whole Villa collection, so it is up to the judges, the lawyers, to decide if this is a knockoff or whether they made enough changes to get by," he said.

Crate and Barrel spokeswoman Bette Kahn said she gave a photo of the Villa chair -- downloaded from the Donghia Web site -- to her company's upholstered furniture buyer, "and he said he never saw it before until I showed him the picture."

Clearly for many consumers, the bottom line is the bottom line. They simply can't or won't pay top dollar for a designer original.

Donnelly, whose shop is hosting the Herman Miller show, cites three reasons to avoid knockoffs: "Better workmanship and materials, higher resale value and bragging rights. Authentic is authentic. It's the difference between fine cheese and Velveeta. The fake ones are cheap for a reason."

What separates a $300 Noguchi knockoff from the $999 Herman Miller model is the signed, 3/4 -inch glass top and "flawless" finish on the wooden base, said Donnelly. "We have a mantra here: Buy it once, you buy it for life. With knockoffs, it's money in the wrong direction."

Yet Herman Miller's Mojzak acknowledges the fight has its limits: "If you take a product that isn't protected [by design patents or trade dress], as long as consumers are not being misled into thinking they are getting an original, that's American business, and there is nothing we can do to stop them."

 

Source:
The Washington Post Company
By Annie Groer Staff Writer
Thursday, August 21, 2003

 

 

"Louis" <louislo...@free.fr> wrote in message news:bb366dca.04040...@posting.google.com...