Research and development: Formway furniture

Kent Parker (left) and Paul Wilkinson lead a team whose designs have achieved US$50 million in overseas sales. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Research and development doesn't always happen in the obvious places. Anthony Doesburg profiles some of the companies getting taxpayer help to boost their innovation efforts.

A chair is a chair is a chair ... how could millions of R&D dollars possibly improve on the object where we park our backsides?

Paul Wilkinson and Kent Parker, joint general managers of Wellington's Formway Design Studio, are quick to enlighten.

"If there are such things as trainspotters in furniture, that's us," says Parker.

The pair lead a team of 18 designers whose products have racked up overseas sales of more than US$50 million, with patents for seating materials and mechanisms, and whose latest creation is being launched into Europe by Italian company Natuzzi.

The design studio is owned by Formway Furniture, which has been in business in Lower Hutt for 58 years.

"For the past eight years we've concentrated on high-performance seating design to support the body in the rather long periods we spend in our work environment," Parker says.

Their big seller is the Be Chair, which is made and sold in the US under licence as the ReGeneration chair. It has seated a number of world leaders including Bill Clinton.

The chair has an injection- moulded polymer mesh back which is stretched in a patent-protected process developed with US chemical company DuPont, making it strong and flexible.

A typical development project takes four years from inception to commercialisation.

The company has three research projects under way and a fourth that's on the shelf until next month. The Callaghan Innovation grant will go towards all of those.

Some of the research relates to new materials but Formway also studies society's "megatrends" to spot new opportunities resulting from population and cultural shifts.

Domestic seating is well behind commercial in ergonomics, materials and technology so that opportunity is "ripe for the picking".

This month their first foray into the domestic market will come to fruition with the release of the Re-vive recliner, by Natuzzi.

"Domestic products are typically static, pivoting in just two directions, but the design for Natuzzi flexes and moves in multiple directions," Parker says.

Wilkinson and Parker say the formula of licensing New Zealand designs to overseas customers who are responsible for 90 per cent of their income goes down well with Callaghan Innovation.

"They love that we do this in Wellington and that the royalties we make come into the country from overseas," says Parker.

What: Lower Hutt furniture designer
R&D spending: About $2.5 million in 2015.