Three key areas of the Slovenian woodworking and furniture industry: world-class design, buildings, and niche-oriented furniture, including tailor-made products for hotels, yachts, and aircraft.
That Slovenia's wood and furniture industry has a long tradition comes as no surprise: hardly any other European country is as densely covered by woods as the Alpine Republic. This wood is often of the highest quality and recently became the material of choice of Slovenia’s young designers.
The best designs of wooden products are given awards in a competition organized by the public agency SPIRIT together with the Slovenian Designer Association and the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology. This years’ top award went to MYwater, a unique wooden water filling station that combines healthy and sustainable materials with IT and state-of-the-art water filtration technology.
The runners-up were KOHO – modular wooden spoons, and RWWIN, front doors made from recycled old wood. Other best-designed products include a wooden multifunctional charger, washbasin, outdoor children’s house, a wooden belt buckle, and various pieces of exclusively designed furniture.
As a final example of global design awards given to Slovenian wooden products, this year’s Red Dot award winner: the Ooh Noo series of wooden tethers by Wilsonic Design. In 2020, Slovenia’s wooden pavilion at this year’s EXPO in Dubai was shortlisted for the Architectural Master Prize, one of the most prestigious global architecture awards.
In the last two decades the old and established manufacturers of prefabricated wooden buildings – like Marles and Jelovica – were joined by numerous SME’s like Rihter or Lumar. Lumar is one of the best fast-growing companies in Slovenia. Its zero-emission buildings are sold in markets like Italy, Austria, and Switzerland: one of their models made it into the finals for this years’ Active House Award.
Slovenia’s furniture production is increasingly moving from large series production to unique and tailor-made products. Exclusive handmade furniture is made by design studios and workshops like Julijan Krapež, LLEESS, Studio Moste, 3S Design, LIPP Bohinj, or Satler. Stilles is specialized in hotel furniture. Its 300 employees craft tailor-made products for top hotel chains, like Kempinski, Hilton, Hyatt, Sheraton, Le Meridien, and Mariott. Bobič is a family business founded back in 1960 and is specialized in “custom made furniture present in the air, on land, and on water”: the company offers mostly exclusive furniture for aircraft and yacht interiors. The company I-Les Iskra specializes in producing t cross-laminated timber for yacht deckings.
The use of wood is not limited to furniture: far from it. Slovenian companies offer products like wooden bicycles, pens, headphones, computer cases, wooden amplifiers for smartphones, pinhole cameras, and even a wooden diatonic accordion. These products are often – though not always – made by start-up companies and are launched through crowdfunding platforms.
Small wooden products were Slovenia’s first exporting success: peddlers have sold “suha roba”, wooden kitchenware from the small town of Ribnica throughout Central Europe since the late Middle Ages. The work of young Slovenian designers reflects this tradition – but also indicates that wood is the material of the future.
