Office furniture manufacturers Wilkhahn and Teknion announced a planned collaborative partnership. The announcement was made just prior to the opening of NeoCon, the largest North American contract furnishings show, being held in Chicago starting on Monday.
According to the companies, beginning in January 2020, Teknion will be manufacturing the AT office chair range and the Occo multipurpose chair range under a licensing agreement and will be selling the product ranges via its own sales channels in North America under the Wilkhahn AT and Wilkhahn Occo brand names.
With this deal, Wilkhahn will be able to offer these two popular product ranges to more customers on the North American continent. Teknion will also be able to use the ranges to strengthen its own extensive portfolio with additional well-designed, high-quality products.
The new Wilkhahn AT office chair has already received prestigious awards in the US. The chair includes Wilkhahn's patented Trimension, which encourages healthy three-dimensional dynamic sitting. The comfortable Occo multipurpose chair with its distinctive design has also garnered similar accolades.
The collaboration will add to and increase the manufacturing and logistics capacities and Wilkhahn sales channels in North America. Alongside its own sales team, a selected dealer network in the US and Canada and regional sales reps, the Teknion showrooms and Teknion dealer network will also market the AT and Occo ranges in North America beginning early next year.
Founded in 1907, Wilkhahn, a German family-run company, has been doing business in the US since the 1950s. Initially it operated via an import company called Hanseatic Furniture, then went on to collaborate with manufacturers and, in 2007, founded its own subsidiary Wilkhahn Ltd. with showrooms in New York and Chicago. The office chairs, meeting and conference furniture are considered benchmarks of German-made design throughout the world. Alongside the groundbreaking functionality, durability and first-class design of its products, 30 years ago, Wilkhahn established ecological responsibility as an equally important corporate goal and made its name as a multi-award-winning pioneering company for exceptionally sustainable solutions.
Though its had it fits and starts, Wilkhahn enjoys an excellent reputation with the North American architecture and design community due to its consistent development of design models of modernism of the type nurtured by the Bauhaus and Ulm University of Design. Dr Jochen Hahne, grandson of the family-run company's founder and president of Wilkhahn since 2000, therefore firmly believes both partners will benefit from synergy. “We're delighted to be partnering with Teknion, a leading international designer and manufacturer of office furniture, and I'm confident that this collaboration will provide both brands with enormous opportunities for greater market penetration in new areas. Teknion and Wilkhahn complement each other very well and, as family-run companies, both have strong traditions and similar values: distinctive design, exemplary innovations, durable quality and an unshakeable commitment to sustainability. Together we'll be able to offer our customers even more value in many large architectural projects.”
The collaboration will allow Teknion to expand its North American seating portfolio. For David Feldberg, president and CEO of Teknion, the collaboration is a perfect fit with the company's core values. “Wilkhahn's pioneering office seating is internationally recognized as being among the world's finest. For Teknion, this new venture enables us to bring two of Wilkhahn's new innovative, dynamic seating designs to our clients. It's also an honor for us to partner with a company that, like us, places a great emphasis on design innovation, ergonomic excellence and sustainability."
Teknion is showcasing both ranges at NeoCon.