PRODUCTS

MOTION ACTIVATED

Sleigh Furmanac has led the market for motion-intelligent furniture since 1968, and is currently the UK’s largest manufacturer of adjustable beds and motion bed frames.

www.furmanacgroup.com

THE GOAL IS TO SIMPLIFY OUR RANGE

With over 50 years’ experience of producing premium, handmade adjustable beds, Furmanac has achieved a great deal in the bed industry.

The West Midlands-based company, which boasts some 200 employees, prides itself on its superior quality and innovative design (such as its Motion Intelligent beds to relieve minor aches and pains), and its beds are available in hundreds of premium fabric options, paired with mattresses filled with rare fibres and thousands of pocket springs, to suit every customer.

It was always only a matter of time before the company branched out into luxury upholstered divans and headboards, and in 2009 Furmanac launched its Hestia brand. Today the UK’s largest adjustable bed manufacturer, Furmanac started its journey with luxury upholstered bed frames to provide people with stylish lifestyle furniture and the best possible sleep.

Fast forward to today, and, thanks to an immense amount of hard work, and hundreds of hours spent creating one of the best adjustable and upholstered beds on the market, Furmanac will be relaunching its Hestia brand as Hestia Living by the year’s end.

Hestia Living, a brand described as “a unity between the lifestyle products offered by Furmanac”, will be inclusive of the manufacturer’s existing range of occasional furniture and sofabeds (currently branded as MiSofa).

“The goal is to simplify our range and make it much easier for customers to navigate through our range of high-end products, made all in-house, at our Kingswinford factory,” states Furmanac.

Going into 2023, there will be some significant changes to Furmanac’s ranges, and, with even more new products coming out under the Hestia Living umbrella, the business aims to establish a strong presence in the upholstered furniture market.

Furmanac’s MiBed range of motionintelligent adjustable beds will also be experiencing slight changes, with customer needs firmly in mind

Roselin

Available as 2 seater & 3 seater.

THE FAUX FABRIC CHALLENGE

If the goal of CGI imagery is realism, fabric presents creative studios with one of their most significant challenges. This month, Furniture News discovers how some of the sector’s best ensure their simulated sofas and soft furnishings look good enough to touch …

www.orbital.vision www.dybo.io www.thevirtualworks.co.uk

EVERY DISPLAY IN THE WORLD SHOWS A

DIFFERENT SHADE OF THE SAME COLOUR

In the furniture industry, the CGI marketing revolution continues apace, providing sellers with a valuable alternative to traditional photoshoots, plus the promise of a future-proofed image library that can keep pace with the world’s fast-evolving ecommerce demands.

As an eminently tactile subject, furniture’s accurate representation in this arena is particularly important. The most successful CGI needs to convey the feel of a tabletop’s woodgrain, or the cool brush of a metal frame – but nowhere is this verisimilitude more important than in getting across the unique qualities of fabric.

Thankfully, there are experts in the field specialised in replicating the feel of wools, velvets, linens and more in visualisations covering everything from upholstery to soft furnishings – this month, Furniture News asked a few of them to reveal the biggest challenges of simulationg furniture fabrics, and how their studio overcomes them …

CGI by Orbital Vision for Warwick Fabrics

Rob Walker, MD, Orbital Vision: On the fabric front, the main challenges are: colour accuracy (that’s a big one); texture; step-and-repeat issues; tiling issues; creating visible fibres; having high-resolution images that align perfectly; and mixing multiple textures in one fabric.

Having spent more than four years perfecting this, we’re probably leading the field here, but we’re always having to work hard to overcome the next challenge.

We’ve spent well over six figures on scanning kit and equipment, and we have a dogged determination to be the best at doing this, spending hundreds (if not thousands) of unbilled hours just ‘getting it right’. These are probably the core ingredients to creating accurate, realistic fabrics!

Dhawal Jain, founder and CEO, Dybo: Dybo’s primary focus has always been the furniture industry, and we produce millions of visuals of the same product in different variations in an automated manner – so it’s very important for us to understand requirements in the very beginning.

Fabrics are tough for three reasons – colour matching, size matching, and different draping patterns. We generally request customers to send samples or high-resolution scans of their fabrics so we can create the closest digital twins. However, every display in the world shows a different shade of the exact same colour, so we advise that our customers put a disclaimer on their website.

To address the challenge of size and draping patterns in CGI, we have a detailed call with all our customers in the very beginning, to ensure we understand their requirements well. We also have a draping handbook, to help them identify which type of draping their company follows, in case they are unsure.

CGI by Orbital Vision for Linwood

Then we share some test images of every fabric for feedback and, once they are approved, we feed the texel density (similar to size in real life) and draping style into our in-house software. The software uses this information while rendering millions of images of different product combinations, without the customer having to worry about anything.

Paul Stott, owner, The Virtual Works: We recognised the challenges of recreating complex fabric patterns early on, and I’m pleased to say confidently that most of the big challenges have been overcome at The Virtual Works by investing heavily in our specifically designed fabric scanner.

Built for purpose, this scans the fabric at various light levels and depths, forming all the texture maps and bump maps, and creating a seamless 4K highresolution texture with all the nuances of gloss reflectivity required for texturing the model (be that a sofa, bed, curtains …).

These can then be used on our images and zoomed in on to a very high definition – and they can also used on our configurator solutions, giving the user the most realistic view of their 3D model

Orbital Vision provides detailed and realistic texture imagery for clients including Warwick Fabrics

LEBUS UPHOLSTERY

www.lebus.co.uk

Perth

Skye

This month’s cover star, Lebus Upholstery, is looking forward to returning to the January Furniture Show, where it will welcome customers old and new to view its impressive new range of sofa collections.

All the sofas have been carefully handcrafted in the UK by Lebus’ dedicated design and development team over the last few months. Visitors will be able to find Lebus on stand 5-E10.

In the meantime, the business would also like to wish all its customers a Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year!

CORE PRODUCTS

www.coreproducts.co.uk

Core Products recently added to its extensive range of real-wood casual dining sets, which are now in stock and available for delivery in time for Christmas (if ordered soon).

Core’s new Linea range offers a wide selection of casual dining furniture which features antique pine plank-effect tops with grey-wash underframes. The range includes dining tables, chairs, benches and breakfast sets, all of which can be mixed and matched with the supplier’s extensive range of living and occasional furniture.

Linea

THE POWER OF THREE

Sleep-tech firm Simba continues to take major strides to fulfill the three pillars of its ambitious vision – people, planet and health – with the aim of engineering the perfect night’s sleep.

www.simbasleep.com

As the world waited for binding climate action at COP27, awardwinning sleep-tech firm Simba watched closely, maintaining its form belief that global businesses have a key role to play in driving change by providing consumers with greener, more ethical choices.

As an integral part of its focus on the planet’s health, Simba is moving towards B Corp status by continuing to challenge and innovate ethical new product development within the sector.

Simba has also rallied its workforce to tackle carbon emissions in the supply chain. After 100 test products, it arrived at the Simba Green Organic (GO) Mattress, which is currently being rolled out across Canada and the UK.

The GO mattress has half the carbon footprint of traditional Hybrid mattresses. Simba uses local manufacturing, SEDEX-compliant factories and smart, rolled-in-a-box packaging to slash emissions – while the brand has cut waste sent to landfill by sourcing GRS-recycled, recyclable and toxin-free materials, such as organic and BCI cotton, CertiPur foam and FSC cardboard.

Simba’s sustainable innovations recently received a commendation from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), reflecting the strides the business has taken in reducing its supply chain impact.

There are multiple recorded health benefits to getting a good night’s sleep, says Simba, which is all set to innovate further

IT’S A LONG JOURNEY, BUT SIMBA IS DETERMINED TO GET THERE AS QUICKLY

AS IT CAN

The Simba Green Organic (GO) Mattress is currently being rolled out across the UK

Simba’s Hybrid Original remains one of the barnd’s most popular models

Moving on to the second of Simba’s three ‘pillars’ – people – the brand enjoyed a recent win when it was named the 23rd Best Small Company to work for in Best Companies’ league table, while securing a top-three position in the Best Retail Company category. Simba believes in a nimble, democratic and flexible operating structure for all its staff.

Finally, when it comes to health, Simba’s ultimate aim is to improve the sleep quality of every one of its customers – and beyond the multiple recorded health benefits of a good night’s sleep, Simba has several techfocused developments in the pipeline for 2023.

“It’s undeniably a long journey, but Simba is determined to get there as quickly as it can,” states the visionary brand

RHENUS HOME DELIVERY UK

www.rhenus-home-delivery.co.uk

Rhenus Home Delivery provides a professional and reliable twoman final-mile delivery service, with over 17 years of operational experience within the UK.

Its premium service level includes delivery to the customer’s room of choice, which can be specialised with a variety of extra value-added services. Rhenus’ staff are experts in delivering difficult-to-handle items including all indoor and outdoor furniture, as well as exercise equipment and brown goods.

One of the specialist’s additional services is sustainable solutions for the unwrapping and disposal of packaging, as well as the removal and recycling of old or unwanted mattresses from customers’ homes. Rhenus can recycle 94% of mattresses, and 100% of the mattresses are diverted from landfill to continue through their valuable lifecycle.

FURDECO HOME DELIVERY

www.furdeco.co.uk

Furdeco’s HQ in Bloxwich, Walsall

Why should anyone looking to review their two-person delivery service choose Furdeco? For five reasons, states the fulfilment specialist:

“Ready. We are prepared for new clients, with rapid onboarding and transparent processes.

“Buoyant. This has been a year of continuous growth, where we have scaled and enhanced our service.

“Scale. We have flexibility and capability to scale to fulfil client needs, with new warehousing, new vehicles, and improved technology.

“Reach. Delivering to remote locations and difficult-to-access homes are part of our day-to-day service, with full UK coverage.

“Service. Our success is measured by our continuous growth, happy clients and customers.”

“Furdeco – your reputation, delivered.”

Stringent checks are carried out at every stage of the process Ash Logistics boasts a best-in-class industry platform

ASH LOGISTICS

www.ashlogistics.co.uk

Ash Logistics has built an enviable reputation working in partnership with premium furniture and furnishing brands to “Deliver Delight” to its customers, and now boasts a customer satisfaction rating of 99.9%.

Recognising the important role it plays in being the last customer touchpoint with its clients’ brand, Ash is obsessive about delivering consistently high levels of personalised care, with stringent quality checks ensuring minimal returns and repeat business. Ash Logistics owns an infrastructure of four depots across the UK, with daily internal line haul. Its best-in-class bespoke industry platform maximises efficiencies at every level, and provides vital management information to its partners, enabling them to better drive profit.