Moroso: More hip, more modern

If you had asked businessman Joseph Tay a few years ago how he would have felt about starting a business in high-end designer furniture from Italy, he would have laughed it off. Joseph has a management engineering degree from Ateneo and an MBA from Cambridge University. He worked at Shell and San Miguel, and also in the Tay family business which is animal feeds. 

On the other hand, his wife Stephanie Michel Coyiuto-Tay would have loved the idea right away. Though Stephanie is a finance person by training, by profession, and by blood — she studied finance at the University of Singapore and earned her master’s at Columbia University in New York, worked at JP Morgan in Singapore, and helped out in the Coyiuto family insurance business — the creative arts have always interested her.

Though the two of them were financial experts and had already established careers in their fields, they still were on the lookout for a business of their own, something they could do together as a newly married couple.

Joseph just didn’t think it would be designer furniture.

Stephanie had been eyeing an Italian furniture company that she had seen in her travels. “I discovered Moroso when we were in San Francisco and we were staying at St. Regis Hotel, which is just across the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. My mom, Elena Coyiuto, likes furniture and she’s into real estate. They buy and decorate houses and then sell them. We saw the installation of Moroso in San Francisco and I had also seen it when I was studying in New York and in Europe.”

Stephanie had to convert her husband Joseph, who describes his family business as “very basic — you can’t get more basic than animal feed,” and when he would see that one living room set of furniture pieces could cost as much as a million pesos, his mind would immediately convert that into tonnage — of animal feed.

What clinched the deal of the Tay couple to bring Moroso to Manila was a spring trip to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile or the International Furniture Fair in Milan, the largest decoration trade fair in the world featuring the latest in furniture designs around the world.

“All the top brands were represented there and when we visited the Moroso stand, we were very impressed,” says Joseph. “We saw a lot of different high-end brands but we liked Moroso best. Their booth was by far one of the largest and I felt that the design and buzz it was generating was the most vibrant — the top architects, designers, and government officials supporting Italian furniture makers and media were all there.”

Back in Manila, the Tay couple — both holding the position of managing director of their company Casa Bella Home and Living — consulted their architect friends on the kind of furniture they wanted to see in Manila. They went to the offices of Ed Calma, Ramon Antonio and Ed Ledesma and told them they were choosing between several high-end Italian furniture companies. All three were enthusiastic about Moroso.

“It’s a well-known name among architects and interior designers who are always looking for exciting products so they have more choices to offer their clients,” says Joseph. 

In December last year, the Moroso showroom located at the lobby of the AIC Burgundy Empire Tower on ADB Avenue in Ortigas Center opened.

The showroom offers off-the-floor chairs and accepts orders of all the pieces on the cata-logue (standard delivery time to the Philip-pines is three months). Stephanie explains that 50 percent of Moroso pieces would be traditional designs and the rest would be avant-garde.

Architect Sting Dulla, sales and marketing manager of Moroso showroom, says the brand was started by Augusto and Diana Moroso in 1952 as a family business and has grown globally in the past five decades. “In the early ‘80s, the couple asked their daughter Patrizia Morozo to lead the design group. She had all kinds of creative friends — designers, architecture students, sculptors, artists — and she asked them to design for Moroso, which developed into pieces that were regarded as creative sculptures-slash-functional furniture. So you have different variations — from the roots of Moroso, the parents, and Patricia’s, the modern creative side.”

“They’re very artistic in how they present their pieces,” says interior designer Jeizele S. delos Reyes, sales associate at the Moroso showroom.

In the 2009 Salone del Mobile in Milan, for instance, Patrizia came up with the theme M’Afrique. Married to a Senegal national, Patrizia says in an interview with T magazine that “the original idea was to change the perception of Africa in the minds of the people, and to show that contemporary art, photography, design, or architecture can also be found in Africa in the most beautiful way.”  

The pieces are stunningly colorful, both for indoor and outdoor, and whimsical — and yet would still fit in a space filled with traditional or modern pieces.  

Jeizele says, “A lot of people who come here are surprised by the look we have. Usually they are bombarded by very conservative or streamlined designs, but then they come in and see the African pieces. They ask us, ‘Is this Italian?’ Because the pieces look really different.”

 “We chose the more avant-garde pieces for the showroom but we have a lot of stocks in traditional pieces,” Stephanie says. “Our strength lies in the flexibility of the furniture. If you’re building a new home, we have pieces that will fill your space; on the other hand, if you have existing pieces already, we have a lot of accent pieces to make your space more colorful.”

Plus, Moroso comes up with the most number of collections a year — about 10 — and many of them, because Italian furniture is a niche market, are not mass-produced. 

And of the price tags? They range from P30,000 per chair to as much as P1.2 million for a living room set. But they are pieces by the world’s leading designers like Ron Arad, Patricia Urquiola, Tord Boontje, and Tokujin Yoshioka.

“It is a niche market,” says Joseph of the pricing. “For people who are spending a considerable sum in building their house, spending a certain amount for high-quality furniture pieces would not be an issue. When people ask us, what makes a piece of furniture worth one million? First of all, it is 100-percent made in Italy with the best craftsmanship. It’s all handmade. There’s a lot of R&D and upfront costs even before the designs are produced. Moroso works with a wide array of internationally recognized designers. No. 2, these were made by designers such as Ron Arad. An Arad piece is very valuable. It’s art expressed in furniture. So the P1 million is not just a piece of furniture, it’s a piece of art — and it lasts for a long time. Besides, classic furniture pieces appreciate in price over time.”

Take Ron Arad’s Victoria and Albert furniture series, named after the famous London Museum. This collection has been described as Arad’s “sculptured upholstery” and has been on the company’s catalogue for years. They are regarded as “living” solutions.

“Two armchairs accompany a sofa that is the absolute main character on the stage: a true ‘positive form’ that is capable of mediating design and functionality combining both research and technology, thus assuring a comfortable and cozy place to rest without having to give up ‘pillowy’ solutions. In this case, even the designer does not intend to build a totem, his intention is expressed by the possibility to use an object in the most normal manner considering both comfort and beauty.”

Then there is the molded polyethylene O-nest armchair by Tord Boontje. Its “enveloping shape is reminiscent of a flowering bush; the embossed floral decorations are a hallmark of the Dutch designer. This sculptural piece unites attractive decoration with excellent quality and versatility.”

Designer Patricia Urquiola’s Shanghai Tip collection was inspired by — you guessed it — chopsticks. It’s said that she was playing with her chopsticks and dropping them on the table, resulting in a collection of chrome-steel and black painted tube legs that are reminiscent of wooden sticks used for playing Mikado (pick-up sticks).  

Joseph points to one wall of the Moroso showroom and says, “This collection is called Bouquet.” At first glance I thought they were tabletop decorative pieces, but it turns out they are armchairs that look like a bunch of flowers. Designer Tokujin Yoshioka “used about 30,000 paper tissues to recreate a cloud-like atmosphere” for the prototype. “The Bouquet chair blooms on a slim, chrome-metal stem that blossoms with white or delicately-colored petals made of hand-folded fabric squares sewn one by one, with great care and infinite patience, to completely cover the internal surface of the egg-shaped, wrap-around shell.”

With Moroso, you realize that there’s a lot more to Italian furniture than leather and minimalist pieces. There’s whimsy, there’s color, fun and the element of surprise — and pieces that make you understand the meaning of the term “functional art.” 

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The Moroso showroom is located at the lobby of AIC Burgundy Empire Tower, ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City. Call 470-1089.