History

Pli Design has been making eco-friendly furniture since 2003. We are a small business with big ideas: 2 full-time staff, several freelance design partners and a tight network of manufacturing partners. All of our design and production is done in the UK.

Exhibitions and major commissions

2010

• Whitechapel collection is shortlisted for Sustainable Product of the Year at the Hidden Art awards
• Eco Home Exhibition at the Geffrye Museum in London features the Reee chair

2009

• Hoop table is featured in the Sunday Times Style section
• Pli supplies Reee chairs to the Wetland & Wildfowl Trust centre at Castle Espie, Northern Ireland
• Pli launches the Whitechapel collection at 100% Design, London
• Pli supplies Reee chairs to The RSPB visitor centre, Leighton Moss in Lancashire
• Winner of the Hidden Art award for Product of the Year for the Reee chair
• Reee chair is runner-up in the Grand Designs Awards, Furniture category
• ‘Highly Commended Green Business’ award at the 2009 Lambeth Business Awards
• Pli supplies Reee chairs to the Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, House of Commons

2008

• Reee chair wins “Best innovation” at the Interiors Birmingham Collection exhibition
• Pli supplies Reee chairs to The Hub in London and Amsterdam
• Pli supplies Reee chairs to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
• Pli supplies Reee chairs to the Institute of Materials, Mining and Minerals conference centre

2007

• Reee chair prototype is shown at Designers Block, London Design Festival & Twist bench introduced
• Alex Whitney joins Pli as design manager

2006

• Grass collection of straw & bamboo cabinets launched at [re]design, London Design Festival
• Pli featured on BBC2′s ‘Home’ interiors documentary

2005

• Pli supplies Re-Form chairs to the Eden Project, Cornwall
• Re-form chair shown at the inaugural [re]design exhibition, London Design Festival

2004

• Exhibition of bamboo occasional tables with Hidden Art at Salone del Mobile, Milan
• Debut furniture exhibition at Metropolitan Works ’04, Whitechapel

2003

• Pli founded in September ’03

Pli’s story so far…

Start-up

Pli’s founder, Christopher Pett, established the workshop in south London in September 2003 with the aim of building a business that had sustainable design and manufacturing principles at its heart, from the very beginning. We remain in the same building, although our workshop space has grown. Our principles remain exactly the same as the day we started.

Learning how

The first designs from Pli were displayed at the Milan Furniture Show in 2004 on the Hidden Art stand. Pli displayed a pair of bamboo-veneered coffee tables with aluminium legs. One of them, the Hoop table, went on to become our best selling product in the early years after it was featured in the style sections of several weekend newspapers.

We began by making each piece to order, by hand, in our workshop. Christopher got to travel the length of England, dropping off tables and chatting with their new owners. The best way to understand your customers’ needs is to talk with them directly. So we learned why people want eco-friendly furniture, what it means to them and how we can meet their needs better.

Scaling up

In 2005, Pli won a contract to manufacture the chairs for the Eden Project’s new education building in Cornwall. For the first time, Pli manufactured the work of another designer (Aaron Moore). We outsourced the production to manufacturers elsewhere in the UK.

We launched the ‘Grass’ collection of straw and bamboo cabinets in 2006 and delivered two consulting projects for clients in the area of sustainable product design. We also started work on the Reee chair, made from recycled computer games console plastic, and appointed Sprout as design partner.

Manufacturing and design

Since the launch of the Reee chair in 2008, Pli has been focused on manufacturing large batches of chairs and tables, mainly for commercial interiors but also for domestic retail. Alex Whitney joined Pli in 2007, bringing crucial experience of furniture design and production from his previous career with Formway in New Zealand.

The culmination of Alex’s collaboration with Christopher on new product design came with the launch of the Whitechapel collection in late 2009/early 2010. Meanwhile we established an annual intern programme in 2008, in order to offer mentoring to talented design students with an interest in sustainable design.

What next?

Pli continues to develop new furniture designs, both in-house and with our design partners. We introduced a new range of sustainable seating in 2010, based on a concept of seamless take-back, reconfiguration and reuse. Meanwhile we are expanding our consulting and advisory services.

Our main goal is to maintain very high standards of quality and value for money while increasing our manufacturing output to meet customer demand.