Dedon Furniture: From Cebu to the World... In Style

Bobby Dekeyser doesn’t just think out of the box; he throws the box out entirely. Nepotism isn’t a bad word around his multi-million, multi-nation business; it is at the core of his business philosophy. He speaks of the "soul" of his furniture, and decided to start his company while lying in a hospital bed with half his face bashed in, at the end of a bright career with a top European football team–and all of 26 years old. The most creative scriptwriter couldn’t have come up with a better story, and the sharpest business guru couldn’t have come up with a more intriguing business model.

Bobby Dekeyser was goal-keeper for his school team and had met the legends Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer at a football camp. One day when he was barely 17, he "stood up in the middle of class and said ‘no’"–and dropped out of school. He played football, served in the Belgian army (his father Marc is Belgian, mother Edda is Austrian), and played more football until his short but illustrious sports career came to a screeching end in 1990 with a severe game injury to his face that, fortunately, has left no disfiguring scars.

In 1991 he meets a Filipino, Manny Climaco, at a furniture show in Cologne, who introduces him to the wonders of basket weaving in Cebu. In a snap Dekeyser packs his family and spends a few months in the idyllic island, and there found the perfect match for the all-weather synthetic fiber his family had developed–called Hularo–and his quest of "creating an outdoor living room" with furniture that could take sun, rain, wind and snow without fading, breaking or otherwise deteriorating.

Around 2000 he set up a factory to make woven furniture in Cebu–it was a shed without windows and ten workers, plus a 24-year-old farm boy from France named Hervé Lampert–Dekeyser describes him as "a genius"–who until today runs the operation that has now grown to three state-of-the-art factories (a 20,000-square-meter fourth factory scheduled for completion in late 2007 will increase capacity by 30 percent on its first year, and by 50 percent the next year) all in Mandaue, Cebu, employing over 3,000 people. Last year they shipped out 850 containers of furniture worth $23 million; that figure is expected to increase by over 60 percent this year.

Dedon burst on to the world stage in a big way, with iconic furniture that, says Dekeyser, "is not high end but luxury, is not a need but a fantasy". A factory in Lüneburg, Germany (headquarters of Dedon; the site was originally Dekeyser’s chicken farm but is now a sprawling complex of factory, office and showroom) produces 1,800 tons of the Hularo fiber a year, all of it shipped to Cebu to be crafted into pieces that populate the homes and gardens of the likes of Brad Pitt and Michael Schumacher, the interiors of the luxury ship Queen Mary 2, and exclusive resort, hotel and club properties all over the world.

Dedon featured prominently at this year’s World Cup, particularly at the Schlosshotel Grunewald in Berlin where the German national team stayed. "We certainly wanted to support the national team during the big home game," says Dekeyser, who celebrated each goal the team scored with a matching donation of one piece–the popular Orbit chair–subsequently auctioned off for charity.

Such unorthodox practices are the norm rather than the exception for Dekeyser and Dedon. The company is still a "family and friends" operation: "every important position within the company is held by family members and close friends", including sister Sonja and husband Jan van der Hagen (they do marketing), sister Nathalie (art direction), and in Cebu Hervé and his brother Vincent (who speaks better Cebuano than English) man the factory floors, and their mother acted as tour guide for the group of 30 buyers visiting from the Benelux.

That feeling of family translates to their over 3,000 workers, who are paid above-industry wages in unbelievably clean and airy factories with high safety protocols, health insurance, in-house physicians, near-gourmet cafeterias (everybody eats there, including the "expats"), brightly-painted shuttle buses that ferry workers on two shifts six days a week. The company philosophy that "only a contented person can find a comfortable chair" is translated into the work philosophy that "only a contented worker can create a comfortable chair".

The company invests heavily in training its workers, with each worker undergoing between 30 to 40 hours of training a year. Difficulty in securing visas has prevented the company from sending many of the workers to Germany.

"Without Cebu, Dedon is nothing," he says categorically. He tirelessly promotes Cebu, and brings dealers and buyers over "so they can see for themselves how our furniture is made, and meet our workers and see what we mean." Whatever this exuberant 42-year-old (the workers had a surprise birthday party for him during our visit) might say is backed up by the unqualified success of his dream.

His invitation to "share our dream" has been extended to the youth at the Don Bosco mission in Cebu, where Dedon has set up a furniture weaving school. The idea came to Lampert during a soccer game in Cebu where he met the Silesian priest running the mission; Dedon also supports Don Bosco’s sports academy, and when he is in town Dekeyser goes over to show the kids a few moves from his days as a goalie.

The young men and women are trained in basic weaving techniques and patterns. They work with hammer, staple gun and cutter, and learn too discipline, hard work, respect. The training lasts six months, after which they are given a diploma–and with it a real chance at getting a job, with Dedon or elsewhere.

Indeed, the Dedon dream is something worth aspiring for. At its most basic, it is a dream of a better life–a better quality of life–shared by and with family and friends, surrounded by beautiful things made with pride and with a lot of heart. "Our pieces are islands of serenity, of inspiration, of peace in a fast-paced world." To spread this vision, the company is expanding into "a whole new lifestyle look" including home accessories, fabrics (woven by Rubelli in Venice; the collection currently includes 24 fabrics, including some for automobiles), even relaxing music tapes. The dream that began on a hospital bed and took root in the hands of skilled weavers in Cebu has indeed conquered the world–in great style.