HOT BEDS AND COOL SOFAS - Joinwell Limited

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Hot beds
and cool sofas
MICHELA SPITERI meets MARIS PACE at Joinwell
and talks about the furniture that redefines contemporary.

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Once upon a time, few things were cooler than a pair of
RayBans and owning a sofa or a wardrobe certainly wasn’t
one of them. But then Molteni & C redefined cool. You
could perhaps compare these furniture-makers to a Stanley Kubrick
movie for which the world is not quite ready at its moment of
release.
You see, that doesn’t really matter because years later, when the
world is finally ready, you will find that it is still just as good as it
once was. And that is the beauty of a classic whether it’s a car, a
watch, a sofa, a bed, a wardrobe or a good bottle of wine.
What Patek Philippe is to watches and Rolls Royce to cars,
Molteni & C is to furniture. It’s all of that and a bag of chips. If you
have it, you’ve made it, you’re right there with the Berlusconis, the
Beckhams ... the Posh Spices of this world.
It should be obvious but perhaps it’s not: it all began in northern
Italy. It was the 1930s (not the most auspicious time to start a
business) and Angelo Molteni began hand-building furniture on a
building site behind his home in Brianza. The world war came and
went, the business grew on the back of quality and truly breathtaking
design, and 75 years later, Molteni & C remains in Brianza but has
reached frontiers that are rather wider. Molteni furniture is sold in
all the big cities of the world – and for the past year, in Malta.
Landing a contract to represent Moltoni & C is no mean feat and
could mean years of negotiation and fierce competition. I am sitting
across from Maris Pace, Joinwell’s brand marketing manager,
a position she has held for two years - ever since Joinwell’s big
move to their flagship three-floor showroom in Qormi. She is still as
passionate about it all as the day she started.
It’s very hard for her to contain her excitement about the Molteni
& C product and to disguise the obvious pride she feels about being
a part of the present Joinwell team, especially since she feels she
was perhaps somewhat instrumental in convincing the big boys to
take on these high end brands. “It’s very important to have the right
products in your shop. There is little point in investing millions in
doing up a showroom if you are not going to fill it up with the right
brands,” she tells me.
Molteni & C is the number one furniture brand worldwide. When
Molteni actually picks your company to do business with and gives
your showroom the thumbs up, it is apparently the ultimate furniture
deal. And even when you are up and running and have purchased
Maris Pace at Joinwell

your catalogues and all the furniture you are
going to display in that showroom, Molteni
keeps you guessing and on your toes until
the 11 th hour. “Suppliers frequently tell us this
showroom has put Joinwell on the map,” she says, of
the building designed by top architect Ray Demicoli and
modelled on the inside by leading new name Chris Briffa.
Surprise visits by suppliers are not uncommon, and they expect
the showroom to be in excellent nick. This suits Maris Pace down
to a tee; she actually finds comfort in the rapport. She explains that
it is important to feel right at home with a brand and that there is
reciprocity in this. She would have no qualms turning down the
chance to do business with a top brand if she did not feel entirely
comfortable with the way that brand ran its own business. “Trust is
all-important,” she says. “If I can see that a showroom abroad is
not run as it should be, an alarm goes off in my head because if the
brand can’t take care of its own showroom, it will never be able to
help us with ours.”
“It’s very important to have the right
products in your shop. There is little
point in investing millions in doing up a
showroom if you are not going to fill it
up with the right brands,” maris tells me.
Maris Pace tells me that the key to a successful furniture business
like Joinwell is having solid brands which are in different leagues
and which complement, rather than compete with, each other. The
latest addition to the Joinwell portfolio is MisuraEmme, another
high-end Italian brand which has been making furniture since
the 1930s. Its pieces are stylish and very contemporary, but more
affordable – if you wish to see it that way – than MisuraEmme. As
she describes it: “If people feel they can’t afford Molteni but want
the same sort of style, they’d go for a MisuraEmme and still come
away feeling happy. It’s designer quality that lasts.”
MisuraEmme is the ‘mother’ or main brand: its sub-brands are
GAB - a range for children and teenagers, Atelier - the designer
range, Sartoria Italiana Armadi – all wardrobes. >p16

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>As with everything from clothes to cars, where quality is concerned,
the devil is in the detail. Furniture is no exception: the details reveal
the quality, or the lack of it. Pace points out that other brands try
to emulate this level of detail, but they are invariably a year too
late, and cannot do it effectively while cutting cost. “It might be a
perfect aesthetic match to the naked eye, but the feel is something
you can never reproduce,” she says.
The innovative Crossing Wall Unit for instance, is a MisuraEmme
product with a television screen built into the glass sliding panels in a
way that leaves no trace of the television when it is switched off.
Then there is Jean Noveul’s brilliant Molteni & C wall structure,
called ‘Graduate, which seems to float in air because of its invisible
support mechanisms. The Less table, another of Noveul’s creations,
is wafer-thin but with an inner strength hidden by the play of corners
and folds.
Both Molteni & C and MisuraEmme are famous for exploiting
the use of space to the full. Molteni designer Ferruccio Laviani has
rewritten the rules on open storage furniture – with homes getting
smaller, furniture has had to shrink to fit but at the same time, style
and design are even more important, because the fewer pieces
people own, the better they want them to be. Many of these pieces
are able to store a lot inside and still remain compact. A wardrobe
doubles up as the sort of furniture you can place in a hallway, and is
not restricted to the bedroom. Inspired by the screens in Japanese
homes, sliding partitions separate or unite spaces, depending on
how they are needed.
Pace explains that Molteni & C is like having your own personal
Milanese carpenter: anything Molteni can be customised to suit
your space and taste. Pieces are not kept in stock and orders are
always bespoke, produced to order.
The risk to a company like Joinwell of taking on high-end brands
lies in the possibility that there will not be enough demand for them -
but this does not seem to worry Maris Pace. She is quick to point out
that the least popular brand in the showroom is, ironically, the most
affordable one. “Joinwell has been defined from the beginning by

now FLAIR DECEMBER 09 ISSUE 25 17
Molteni designer Ferruccio Laviani has rewritten the rules
on open storage furniture – with homes getting smaller,
furniture has had to shrink to fit but at the same time,
style and design are even more important, because the
fewer pieces people own, the better they want them to be.
quality brands and especially by service, both
during and after sales,” she says. In a fastmoving
world, where much shopping takes place
online and people are accustomed to assembling
products themselves, this kind of after sales service is
now almost a luxury. It costs Joinwell a great deal, but
the company is willing to go the extra mile.
“Customers appreciate service and are ready to
pay that little bit more because they are guaranteed
a professional approach,” Pace says. “People in Malta
like to spend money on their homes. The prevailing
mentality is still about spending a fortune on the actual
plot of land or construction, and setting aside only a small
percentage to do it up in style and comfort - but this is changing
slowly.” Joinwell’s clients base for Molteni & C and MisuraEmme
is largely made up of people who are guided by architects and
interior designers, she says. >p18

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>With standards set ever higher, couples are spending more
and more money on their homes, and entertaining has become
fashionable again. Having proper cutlery and a good dinner service is
in again. Having a top of the range sofa is almost de rigueur. It’s not
uncommon for people to sacrifice whole bedrooms to accommodate
walk-in Sex-and-The-City style wardrobes. Pace tells me that
wardrobes are “big”: “There’s a huge demand for them. People who
spend money on clothes want to be able to store them properly and
above all, see them well.” Molteni & C designer Rodolfo Dordoni
has created Stack, a versatile walk-in wardrobe which, together
with his system of mobile partitions, Glide, creates the perfect
storage solution - elegant, practical, simple and luxurious.
The curious blessing with Molteni & C is that you aren’t limited
to just the one designer, carpenter or architect. You can have your
pick of Patricia Urquiola headboards, Hannes Wettstein beds, Luca
Meda chests-of-drawers, Rodolfo Dordoni wardrobes, Arik Levy
armchairs and an Armani/Dada kitchen. Bridge is a new Molteni &
C kitchen design which marks the beginning of a new partnership
between Armani and the Molteni Group. Fashion icons, architects
and designers, the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Jean Noveul, Aldo
Rossi, Pinuccio Borgonovo and even Renzo Piano, have collaborated
with Molteni & C in some way or form to create high quality design
furnishings for the office and the home.
If you pick up any of the Molteni & C and MisuraEmme catalogues,
the colours are more or less the same – it’s what is in now: shades
of grey, black, charcoal, different whites, browns, pearl, and natural
wood finishes like mutenye, oak and walnut. There are clean lines
and lacquers, a mix of matt and glossy surfaces. There are marble
tops, upholstered headboards, leather sofas, and iconic fabrics are
all the rage.
Today, at dinner parties conversation also steers
toward furniture; it has become the new politics.
Perhaps Maris Pace’s only preoccupation is that here in Malta we
are usually a year behind the times. “When wenge wood was
really in, nobody wanted it here,” she says. “Now that it’s starting
to fade in the rest of Europe, it is in great demand in Malta.” Still,
she believes that furnishings are the new boats, cars, watches and
handbags. Today, at dinner parties conversation also steers toward
furniture; it has become the new politics. I’m not surprised. This
was one fun interview.
Molteni & C and MisuraEmme are at Joinwell, Mill Street, Qormi.