Kartell

Creativity and technology, glamour and functionality, quality and innovation: an extraordinary mix of factors which combined with its strategic vision of distribution has contributed to ensure Kartell's success worldwide. A leading design company, Kartell addresses an international public with an original collection, variety and breadth of range. With its more than 60 years of history masterfully told by its products which express the language and the atmosphere of the times in which they were created, these products are at the same time contemporary objects that bring with them many other values and messages. All this has made Kartell products an integral part of the domestic scene.

They are multifunctional and transversal, user-friendly and of indisputable aesthetic appeal. Colour, irony, a play on the senses, transparencies and unique forms for unique objects, the Kartell product is immediately recognizable all over the world for the emotions it arouses, its durable functionality and its incontestable quality. Continuing advances in the use of materials and experimentation with new technologies to discover previously unimagined properties are fundamental to Kartell product development, whether in seeking functional features or in developing new aesthetic characteristics. It is thanks to this continuing research that we now enjoy the satin finishes, transparency, flexibility, resistance to atmospheric pollutants, softness and that sense of touch in these products.

Kartell has long collaborated with world-famous designers such as Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Mario Bellini, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Antonio Citterio, Michele De Lucchi, Patrick Jouin, Ferruccio Laviani, Piero Lissoni, Patricia Urquiola, Marcel Wanders, Tokujin Yoshioka, Vico Magistretti, Alberto Meda and Front. This creative team together with Kartell has created that special feeling through dialogue and the continual exchange of ideas on design to reach the perfect balance between the design experience of the individual designers and the potential and needs of the company.

The company business encompasses two sectors: LABWARE, laboratory equipment, and HABITAT dedicated to furniture, interior design items and lighting (the latter re-introduced successfully into the catalogue starting in 2000). Today Kartell exports 75% of its sales to 100 countries all over the world. Over its 60 years of activity, Kartell has garnered an enviable series of prestigious international honours including nine Compasso d'Oro awards and the award to the Kartell Museum by the Guggenheim Museum in 2000 as the "best corporate museum".