Talking shop
Kapok founder ARNAULT CASTEL has found a kindred spirit in Swiss furniture brand Vitra. He tells NIGEL WHAN about their new partnership and how it reflects Hongkongers’ ever-changing buying habits
BEFORE COVID- 19 AND the various restrictions that forced Hong Kong residents to spend more time at home, many of us put more thought into our next hotel stay than our actual living spaces. “My home was just a place with a bed where I took a shower and slept, and now I have to live there,” says Arnault Castel, describing the sentiment of many of his fellow Hongkongers. “It’s not comfortable, it’s not functional. I can’t work there. If I want to spend time with my family, it’s a bit too cramped. It’s not nice.”
It’s thoughts like these that have driven many of us to seek out new furniture and interior decor products, as entertaining and relaxing at home have become more common pastimes of late. This has brought functional yet fun and beautiful home products and furniture to the forefront, and Castel’s
Hong Kong company Kapok as well as Swiss furniture giant Vitra have found themselves to be beneficiaries of this “new normal”.
The two brands have now gone so far as to partner in opening Vitra’s first physical retail space in Hong Kong. The collaboration is one of several partner-brand stores for Kapok, which started 15 years ago with a since-closed concept store in Tin Hau and has expanded to five own-brand and four partner-brand stores around the city.
Vitra’s products, designed around the convergence of functional simplicity and aesthetics, suit those who are keen on improving their homes with modernist furniture and who are careful to avoid too much overt flamboyance. Kapok has embraced the personal and warm element of retail
stores, and the market for beautiful homes, the desire for which Castel sees as growing in Hong Kong, by carefully selecting products one might call supernormal and that its team reckons to be “future classics”.
Vitra, whose long history includes embracing new manufacturing techniques and minimalist construction, continues to innovate such future classics as seen in Castel’s favourite Tip Ton chair, a deceptively simple yet truly supernormal design that’s designed to tilt forwards slightly to relieve back and neck strain and enhance comfort.
“It’s still very personal, this kind of select shop,” he says. “We have a [direction] that we’re sticking to and we use this term –
future classics – all the time. We’ve used it for 15 years, so I think it’s good.”
But what, one wonders, would compel someone to shop in a physical store in the era of COVID-19 and online shopping? Castel, for his part, doesn’t see online shopping and physical stores as competitors so much as complementary elements. “I think [online shopping] forced us to think more,” he says. “Of course the selection of products is important, but it forces us to think. Because now that you have all this choice online, why would people go to the store?
“And then I realised that whatever happens, people still have free time. Of course they can go out, they can do sports, they can go to the cinema. But going to a store is still a nice pastime, especially here in Hong Kong.”
So what makes a specific store an attractive destination? Personality, service, environment and location all come to mind. Not to mention sustainability, a focus for Kapok since the beginning and one of Vitra’s long-standing commitments.
“What I love is that when we started a lot of people didn’t care [about sustainability],” Castel says. “They were like, ‘Oh, it’s so much more expensive, why is that?’ and it wasn’t part of the selection process of the product. But now people really care – they’ll do the research, they’ll go for brands [that are sustainable]. Customers are smarter than what a lot of people think, and they can spot the greenwashing and the fake sustainability.
Vitra is also very involved in this.”
While online shopping has its appeal, and was the primary Hong Kong sales channel for Vitra in the past, the Swiss brand is well aware that it’s time to evolve. Both Vitra and Kapok have worked closely with the architects and interior designers of Collective Studio to create a welcoming, entertaining environment for many of their establishments, and in fact were introduced to one another through the firm.
Castel says this joint desire for an inviting store was one of the driving forces behind the partnership. “I feel now that a shop is not just racks and shelving,” he explains. “It’s a mood, and normally when you create this nice environment and people feel good, they will end up shopping. So we also can make it work [financially].
In a city as dynamic as Hong Kong, one attraction is the constant presence of new products, brands and trends in a store, which drives customers to return frequently to see what’s new. “You know, normally, a furniture showroom can be really huge but this is a much smaller space,” Castel says of the Vitra store. “So every two, three months we will actually pick new highlights, new products and new designers.”
To hear Castel describe it, Hongkongers have always been champions of modernity and new styles. “I moved here a very long time ago, 25 years ago, and I think one of the things that really attracted me is the dynamism and people embracing the newness,” he says. “New trends, new products, new designs – they’re not scared of something new.”
As forces as disparate as economics, politics, globalisation and the COVID-19 pandemic have caused shifts throughout
Hong Kong, retail is no exception. Vitra at Kapok introduces some of the best features of European retail while still staying true to Hong Kong’s unique style. Both brands have pioneered ways to adapt to constant shifts in our buying cultures, and their approach seems well poised to become more widespread in our lively, ever-changing city.
“A shop is not just racks and shelving. It’s a mood, and normally when you create this nice environment and people feel good, they will end up shopping” ARNAULT CASTEL