Founded by Mateus Salimena, Few was created to transform and translate everyday life inside a metal mill into real and experimental forms.
Carbon steel, natural leather, canvas and electrostatic paint. These are some of the elements that we can find in the collection of Studio Few, a design and furniture brand that was born inside a small metal company in Rio de Janeiro.
Mateus Salimena, Founder and Managing Director of Few, grew up in an ecosystem where industry reigned. When she started working at her parents' company, she realized that that environment could become something bigger. Moving towards something more creative and innovative, Mateus created Few to be a message of reinvention to the existing frustration caused by the market.
“I grew up in my parents' company, a small metal company that provided services to other companies, and both always cultivated a lot of frustrations about the market, so when I started working there, we decided to create our own product with the intention of changing the direction of the company, well before we had the brand name or anything like that.”
And it didn't take long for things to start to mesh and for the first collection to be ready. The Angle Chair, one of the Studio's icons, was the last piece to enter the collection and ended up becoming a meeting point between the others. Appropriating the collection's striking design, it is possible to see how each fold of the backrest reflects light in a unique way, creating a distribution of gradient tones in the painting.
This is one of the brand's expertise: combining industry knowledge with contemporary design. On the one hand, aesthetics and contemporaneity in the way of designing furniture and occupying spaces, and on the other, the resistance and durability of materials and construction processes.
We spoke with Mateus to learn a little more about the Studio's creation process, its strategies in a digitized era, and prospects for the future.
What is the origin of the name Few? What was the starting point for the creation of the Studio?
The initial intention was to take advantage of expertise with metal and create products combining design as a differentiating factor. Finally, we spent two years producing prototypes, experimenting with finishes, collecting errors and successes until our first collection came off the ground and we started FeW.
The name FeW came from a reflection of our daily lives and the materials most used here, our name is an acronym based on the elements of the periodic table, Fe (Iron) + W (Tungsten), where iron is our main raw material and tungsten is the conduit present in our welding machines, which is one of the main activities involved in the production of our parts
When we think about contemporary design and new immersive technologies, how do you believe this relationship can happen? What initiatives to apply to business in a digitized era?
When we talk about creating a contemporary design brand, I believe that there must be an intention to create products designed for the 'now', that is, products that have a current language, that solve current problems, that communicate with their users without noise and that are aware of the information derived from that communication.
Perhaps one of the biggest difficulties of starting a brand is creating trust with your audience, especially when it comes to marketing a new physical product through online platforms. Thinking about the arrival of new immersive technologies, it is possible to expand the experience and communication with the user. Using augmented reality, the consumer can have an authentic preview of that product, whenever he wants and from wherever he is, taking that product immediately and precisely into his universe, without costs or obstacles, creating an extra layer of trust between the brand and the consumer.
In addition to this aspect, we can take into account how the use of new technologies helps to create a prominent and differential brand positioning in the market, always seeking alternatives to facilitate the interaction of your product user with the product, adding value to the consumer experience and solidifying a relationship of trust between the brand and the consumer.
How are the shapes of the Few pieces designed? What inspires you during the process of creating new furniture?
The creative process of our first collection was certainly the most spontaneous, we knew that industrial aesthetics would be our path to follow, but even so it was a moment of experimentation and the result dictated the personality of the brand. That said, for the following collections our creative process is much more focused on solving problems, always thinking about how the piece we are creating can serve our routine, without compromising functionality and maintaining our characteristic aesthetic language.
I believe that what inspires us most when creating a product or collection is the search for the intersection of functionality and aesthetics. We always want to raise the aesthetics of our pieces while preserving 100% of their functionality. After all, we are producing a piece that will be used every day by our consumer, we want them to feel euphoric when they see our pieces online or in the interior design of their home, but at the same time to feel satisfaction in using the piece on a daily basis.
