At the moment, they also equip Hermès stores around the world with their furniture. ‘Just a few days ago we sent furniture for their store in Tokyo as well. We also equipped Louis Vuitton stores, and two years ago a part of the set for the American film ‘Angel has Fallen’
We drive along narrow winding roads through Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are looking for the village of Medakovo, on whose hills next to the old town of Tešanj, only an hour and a half drive away from Slavonski Brod, designer furniture Artisan is made. After a few wrong turns in the surrounding villages, we arrive in front of the factory’s administrative building, where we are greeted by General Manager Mirza Ćostović.
Our plan is to spend the day in their production facilities, from which furniture that can be found in luxury hotels and restaurants around the world comes out every day. The story, Mirza explains to us right at the beginning, started fourteen years ago when the Ćostović family from Tešanj decided to turn their love of wood into a serious business. Their plan sounded insane to many at the time; they decided to produce expensive designer furniture in the middle of Bosnia and Herzegovina and sell it on foreign markets.
“People were amazed at it as if we were planning to launch a rocket and launch it into space,” he comments. They first started making custom made furniture, and two years later they created their own collection. They started exhibiting at fairs in Europe and within a few years they experienced huge success. Mirza Ćostović, Development Director Edo Mandžukić and Sales Director Armin Huremović showed us all the stages of production and recounted their beginnings, successes and difficulties they encountered as a Bosnian company when they broke into the world market.
Artisan developed from a small carpentry workshop
“Wood is our family tradition”, Mirza Ćostović tells us as we drive along narrow hilly paths towards the first location where the whole production process starts. He explains that Artisan has its roots in their small family workshop, which started woodworking in Yugoslavia in the 1970s. At that time, there was no industrial electricity in the village, so they made carpentry, paneling, floor and wall coverings by hand, and his uncle Fadil Ćostović, one of the owners of Artisan, started shaping wood and working in that workshop as a kid.
During the war, everything stopped, so the small workshop closed its doors. But after the end of the war, they started working again. At that time, Mirza describes, they worked a lot on the renovation of demolished houses, and by chance in the early 2000s, a Dutch company came to Tešanj and moved its production there. “The story was arranged so that we started working with them and we quickly gained experience in making furniture,” says Mirza, adding that after six or seven years, his uncle Fadil decided to return to the family business and founded Artisan with his partners. They started, he says, with about fifteen people, and today they have more than 250 people in production plants.
The special feature of their products is their handicrafts
By the way, the plants of the Artisan factory are located in three locations. Arriving at the first Mirza shows us a pile of thrown thick logs waiting to be sawed. “We use European walnut, oak, elm, cherry, maple and ash wood, and we supply them from Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. We also make furniture from American walnut, which we order from the USA,” he says as we head towards the place where the sawn boards dry naturally.
“Did you feel it blowing here all the time?” Edo interjects, explaining that the constant wind flow is the reason why they decided to set up the primary processing plant right there, at the top of the hill. “We have very good conditions for natural drying here.” He explains that the whole process – from cutting wood in the forest to installation in the final product can take up to a year.
At the same location, a hundred meters below, there is a large hall where the sawmill is. There is a strong smell of wet wood and sawdust. In front of the hall, workers wash the logs with a miniwash to clean the wood of stones and dirt, so they take them for sawing.
However, the special feature of Artisan products, our interviewees emphasize, is that they are handmade. Once a piece of wood comes out of machining, everything is done by hand. “Our craftsmen hand-glue and join the parts, and then the final processing begins, i.e., fine sanding and finally oiling,” says Mirza, adding that Artisan is one of the few companies in Europe that controls the entire production process itself. He also explains that with the advent of modern machines, this type of furniture has become an affordable luxury.
Some lines take up to a year to develop
“High end furniture was made by Scandinavians in the 50’s, and later by Italians, and it was incredibly expensive at the time because all the elements were made by hand, so the production of one piece took days. With the advent of these smart machines, CNCs, the production process has been accelerated many times and the possibility of producing larger quantities for a lower price has been obtained. So it all became a bit more accessible,” Armin tells us as we drive to another location, just minutes away by car.
We enter a huge noisy hall with CNC cutters. This is where Edo and his team of engineers working on the programming of these machines perform. When they receive concrete proposals from the designer in the form of a render, they all sit down together at a table and assess whether they can technically perform the proposed design. “If possible, developers make a program for machines that then cut the boards into organic forms,” Edo says, leading us through a noisy drive toward one of those large machines surrounded by a team of several people. They warn us to move away from the indicated line on the floor as the machine starts cutting.
“For example, this machine is currently shaping the backrest board of the Addo chair of the famous Milan studio Inoda + Sveje, which we are currently working on.” He explains that this is the third version, and he does not rule out that he will work on the fourth. They know how to work on some prototypes for up to a year, and some they manage to perfect in a month, and the product will be finished only when the designer is completely satisfied.
Their furniture is inspected by touch
Artisan offers chairs, tables, drawers, cabinets, beds, lamps, and their most successful product is the Neva chair, for which they have received world design awards such as the Red Dot Design Award and the Interior Innovation Award. They developed this collection in 2012, and the design is signed by the Regular Company from Zagreb.
So far, they say, they have collaborated with about forty designers from all over the world, and they first met the round lines by which they are recognizable today in 2009. Then they started collaborating with Sarajevo professor from the Academy of Fine Arts Salih Teskeredžić. His Latus table is still one of their best-selling products today, and many years ago, Mirza recalls, they did a little experiment with that table. They exhibited it at one fair, at a place where there is the greatest fluctuation of people.
“It was fascinating to watch people stop by and asking to touch it. And they did it completely unknowingly because our furniture is so smooth and perfectly crafted that it can be inspected by touch. We are recognizable by these round shapes that are soft to the touch and we often tell our customers that they should feel our furniture with their hands”. This part is mostly due to a team of about thirty young people who we found in the last drive, harmoniously assembling with the music, beautiful and hand sanding for several hours, and then carefully polishing furniture with rags and oil, which is then hand-packed.
It took a long time to gain customers’ trust
As we walk through the drive, Mirza draws our attention to the finished, newly polished chest of drawers WU of the famous design studio Pang from Bergamo. And that, he says, is the most expensive piece of furniture in their catalog because its making is the most complex. Today, he says, they have reached the stage where designers from all over the world contact them and send their suggestions.
“We used to have to call them,” he laughs, recalling that ten years ago they needed a big designer name for their portfolio, so they contacted one of the world’s most famous product designers, Karim Rashid. “We weren’t sure if he would agree, but when he saw what and how we were making furniture, he made 20 models, of which we accepted several, and some of them are still being produced today,” he recalls.
Sales abroad, Ćostović continues, started thanks to fairs. After developing the first collections, they realized that it was the most important sales tool. They had their first exhibition in Cologne, the most important fair in Europe. Later, they continued to exhibit at fairs in New York, Shanghai, Stockholm, and two years ago they were in Paris for the first time.
Already at the first fairs, they met with the enthusiasm of traders and other exhibitors, but the biggest problem was the country of origin, so at the beginning it was extremely difficult to convince people that something coming from Bosnia is really good. “Many customers we met have never heard of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I remember a man asking me if we had electricity here. People were generally suspicious and we went through a thorny path to success”, explains Ćostović.
Today they equip the shops of Hermès and Louis Vuitton
Going to those first fairs, he says, was extremely exciting for them. “We quickly remembered all those potential customers of ours who came from year to year and admired how it was all done. You get a big round of applause, but it stays that way,” he recalls. For the third year at the Cologne trade fair, things started. They were also visited again by one of the potential buyers from Belgium.
“This man has been in this business all his life, and he sells top brands like Giorgetti and Ceccotti. When he came to us again and finally made the order, we asked him why he hadn’t decided to do so in previous years. He replied that he had to make sure it was the right story and that he wanted to make sure we survived. When people finally convinced themselves that we were serious, the orders started as if we were making the furniture for free”, laughs Ćostović.
Today, their largest markets are in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany, and they sell a lot in the USA and Asia. In South Korea alone, they are present in eleven stores with other top brands, and they also sell furniture in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China where they have their stores. At the moment, they also equip Hermès stores around the world with their furniture. “A couple of days ago, we sent furniture for their store in Tokyo. We also equipped Louis Vuitton stores, and two years ago a part of the set for the American film ‘Angel has Fallen’ with Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman in the lead roles,” says Mirza.
They are surprised to see where their furniture ended up
Artisan furniture is also found in a dozen Michelin-starred restaurants, some of which are Ox & Klee in Cologne, then the famous two-Michelin-starred Marsan in Paris and Harvest in St. Petersburg, one of the top 100 restaurants in the world.
“One of my favorite projects is the sky bridge in New York, the bridge that connects the two buildings, and in 2017 it was built on the seventieth floor by American Copper Buildings. In that bridge there is a lounge bar with our armchairs, so you sit in that glass and look at the Empire State Building,” Armin tells us.
In addition to world-renowned restaurants, Artisan furniture has been commissioned for rooms, restaurants or lounge bars and luxury hotels such as the Hyatt Regency Chicago, Berlin’s Michelberger boutique and Aman hotels, and their Neva chairs are located in the Four Seasons Hotel in Dubai. “Often we don’t even know where our furniture ended up because when architects come to us, we don’t know for whom they are buying it for,” Armin explains, adding that he was surprised countless times when he came across photos of hotels and restaurants with their furniture on Instagram.
“We don’t like to talk publicly about who bought our furniture, but let’s say we heard from our sellers in London that Christian Bale almost bought a dining table. He was filming in London and he came to the salon to buy some lamps and when he saw our Latus he said he was sorry he bought another table a month ago and we got information that Kevin Spacey has our furniture,” he says. Armin.
There were also proposals to open Artisan’s office in Milan
Asked if they expected such a big success, Armin said that a lot was expected, but maybe not in this proportion. “As we have already said, there was a lot of skepticism, even ridicule, and we always met with the comment ‘who will buy it from Bosnia.’ In the beginning, he says, there were even proposals to open an office in Milan to sell the furniture as Italian product. “But the owners didn’t even want to hear about it. It was a brave move, I would say – visionary”, he says.
In recent years, Armin emphasizes, countless people have come to Tešanj because of Artisan. “Our customers come to visit the factory and get to know Bosnia and Herzegovina along the way. For example, two years ago, clients from Hong Kong visited us. They wanted to celebrate the New Year right here, so we took them to Sarajevo after visiting the factory”. He also remembers a Dutch woman who brought her dad to Tešanj for a birthday tour of the factory.
“This lady bought our table in a salon, and her father, who used to work as a carpenter, was so enthusiastic about the workmanship that she started researching and discovered that Artisan is in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She sent us an email asking us to allow them to tour the factory. The owner was so positively surprised that they chose Tešanj from all over the world that he paid for their hotel on Jahorina, which was run by Artisan”, describes Armin and adds that he came across many positive stories through this business. There was, he recalls, an engagement that included Artisan’s table.
“A guy from Zagreb decided to propose to his girlfriend and instead of a ring he decided to give her our table she fell in love with, and since he had no more money left, he asked us to make him a symbolic wooden ring. And of course, we fulfilled his wish”, laughs Armin.
It is no longer a problem for them to sell, but to produce
Artisan launches a dozen new products a year, but not all of them are sold. “We are constantly developing something new and trying to improve the technology,” says Edo, adding that quality always comes first.
“And that is why it is no longer a problem for us to sell, but to produce. Quality must not suffer and we stick to it, and sometimes we are late with deadlines because we do not want to mess with quality”, adds Ćostović and adds that in ten years they see themselves as one of the most important manufacturers of solid wood furniture in the world.
“There are few factories in the world that can offer this level of quality, and many of them have given up working with solid wood, so we have already become a competition to many. We are constantly investing and reinvesting everything our company earns in new halls, wood and machinery. Our passion is to build a brand, to remain recognizable and that keeps us from falling into the existing success”, concludes Ćostović.
The rest of Vjekoslav Skledar’s gallery is available on Telegram.hr
