Design is a story about interactions. Brands of the premium segment in it never exist separately from designers and their projects. This cooperation has a significant impact on the development of companies, on their innovations in production and on the very approach to work with copyright requests.
ELIO is a Ukrainian brand that has not only achieved local success. The company has a recognizable signature, is expanding rapidly, and has already brought its product to the global design arena. The secret of this success lies in the fact that, in addition to premium quality and project support at all stages, at the core of its own philosophy, the brand has a colossally significant trait these days — empathy for the customer.
The company was founded in 1995, and since then has come a long way to its current status. The decision to produce furniture in the premium segment was not born immediately – the founder of the company, Yuriy Korostylov, announced it only in 2004. It was an important break in the process of formation, and at every stage of it, the brand worked side by side with designers. Fighting for a place in this segment of the furniture market means competing with European giants, winning the trust and loyalty of the client, and the ELIO company succeeded in this.
Today, the brand cooperates with designers who develop the most complex and unique solutions for their own projects under the close supervision of the most meticulous customer, and when the project is completed, they do not disappear from the life of the company, but come again. ELIO is turned to in order to get an impeccably high-quality, stylish, modern product, capable of broadcasting the manufacturer’s ideas with the same success as reproducing the client’s original idea.
Today, the design of living spaces is primarily based on the idea of an individual approach and personalization — this is especially noticeable in niche projects. They are eclectic in the combination of visual techniques, distinguished by complex characteristic solutions aimed at simplification and, of course, building a special aesthetic in the everyday life of the customer. Flexibility, adaptability and uncompromising quality are expected from reference companies in the furniture business today.
“When we develop something individual, the result we expect can only be produced by the giants of their niche. We create a complex design solution from scratch — roughly speaking, we start from the end. These decisions are emotionally active, and that is why they complement the visual concept of the author’s interior, the level of comfort also depends significantly on them. In a living space, functionality is just as important as a well-constructed composition of impressions,” he shares Natalia Oleksienko, architect, designer and head of Oleksienko Architects.
“We have to look in one direction! Love advanced ideas, materials. The love of detail should underline the care we take in every product we work with. Whether it’s a door or a kitchen, everything must be done perfectly!” – also emphasizes Yaroslav Zadorozhny, architect and founder of the INTA DESIGN studio.
Collaboration with ELIO is a two-way flow of ideas. The company follows the ways of development of interior solutions in modern design. Integrating another innovation into production, she tries not only to satisfy designers’ requests, but also to anticipate those that have not even been fully formed yet. This allows us to provide the widest range of ready-made solutions for any project.
“One of our main tasks is to turn the designer’s idea into reality, and at the same time to improve the quality of customer service and project processing. We are constantly faced with new challenges and complex tasks, which are helped by monitoring trends, constant involvement of new technologies, constructive solutions and systematization of business processes. In addition to my direct duties, I also pay a lot of attention to these issues,” he shares Sergey Martynovskyi, head of the ELIO PROJECTS department.
The brand listens attentively to the ideas that the designer comes up with and keeps his finger on the pulse of their constructive implementation. It sometimes happens that ideas born in private development are later adapted by ELIO to be put into production: in this way, the aesthetics and technology of furniture in new, unique interpretations become available to a larger number of people as a platform product of the brand.
So, for example, the OTIUM WOOD LINE product was launched — a technology for wrapping aluminum (and not only) profiles and rails with veneers of valuable wood species. This effective and bold solution was born in the process of working on a private project, but later became available to all the company’s clients in Ukraine and abroad. Understanding and popularizing stylish innovations is also one of the features that ELIO stands out in today’s arena of premium design.
Variable approach, single quality
The ideal manufacturer in the designer’s mind is the one who is ready not only to hear his idea, but also to feel its structure at all levels, the significant role of every detail, and bring it to life without breaking the deadlines. The understanding of this request and the desire to satisfy it in a certain moment transformed into ELIO’s business card.
The company set itself the goal of developing a clearly organized system that would allow designers to operate as widely as possible with visual and dimensional variables without harming the clarity of established production algorithms. This is how the platform was born: it provides such an opportunity, while maintaining an effective, recognizable handwriting, the manufacturability of products and very eloquent punctuality. Today, the platform is ELIO’s personal know-how, which is the meaning-making core of the brand.
In essence, this is a system in which each product is divided into structural blocks. They can be “stretched” or “narrowed” according to the initial concept. Figuratively speaking, the platform is most similar to a cloud service in which the full volume of embedded data is stored, which is extracted from it as needed to work on the project. A designer may not create the same kitchen from scratch — it is enough for him to choose a model, and within the framework of this choice, he can combine colors, textures and sizes as he likes.
This allows you to integrate the product not only in unique solutions, but also in unusual locations. With its production position, ELIO favorably stands out from among well-known European companies. They most often broadcast a more standardized approach, and designers in this case are limited only to the specified list of possible dimensional solutions. However, when it comes to a high-budget niche project, in which not only status is important, but also the degree of personalization, the ability to reproduce the author’s idea as accurately as possible is of particular importance to the designer. In such cases, it is the ELIO platform that gives maximum freedom of implementation.
“ELIO has beautiful wardrobes in their line, their quality and level of performance can be compared with European brands of the premium segment, which everyone is familiar with. However, from ELIO we received a non-standard solution adapted to our vision – we can safely say that this brand is distinguished by the level of personalization with the same indicators of quality and uniqueness of the author’s approach. If only the last two variables are important in the project, you can safely contact the leading European brands. However, if you need to implement a complex idea for furnishing a project, our Ukrainian brand ELIO is indispensable in this field.
I choose ELIO because it is possible to create unique solutions from their conventional set of standard solutions,” Nataliya Oleksienko shares her own experience of cooperation with the company.
“The philosophy of our brand is based on the creation of a unique comprehensive offer that has no analogues in Ukraine for the improvement of living space. We sell furniture and interior items based on advanced technologies and our own unique designs. We constantly expand the possibilities of customization in existing products and supplement the line with new ones in order to satisfy the most diverse needs of the client, thanks to which today, probably, none of our projects can do without the use of platform solutions. It seems to me that this fact best demonstrates the potential of such an approach,” says Serhiy Martynovskyi.
Today, the platform is ELIO's personal know-how, which is the meaning-making core of the brand
For the company itself, the involvement of the platform in production created the necessary conditions to competently structure and adjust this production, ensuring even loading of all production capacities. With such an orderly and clear production algorithm, it became much easier to scale the business – today the company is actively expanding, and one of its main priorities is the export direction, entering the international market of the premium segment. Thus, in Germany and France, the development of the ELIO HOME dealer network is already noticeably different in pace and scale, which only favorably emphasizes the correctness of the strategy.
Time is the most valuable resource
Diligence and punctuality are critical features of the manufacturer, which the designer pays attention to. It is not enough to create a high-quality, technologically advanced and visually aesthetic product – it must be included in the project, which is always accompanied by deadlines and individual requirements.
“The most important thing in our work is to meet deadlines and quality! It’s nice to know that the ELIO management personally keeps their finger on the pulse in the work on the project. Working with them, we were able to implement a number of interiors in which the deadlines sounded unrealistic from the beginning, but thanks to the active work of the managers and prompt communication (taking into account the modifications and complex multi-stage installation), we achieved an excellent result and managed everything in time within the agreed period. Working with ELIO, we experience every knot, every detail of the process to create a perfect product, that’s a fact,” says Yaroslav Zadorozhny about his experience working with the brand.
You can achieve such efficiency and commitment in the management of niche projects only by having clearly structured customization algorithms — and ELIO has them. The platform approach allows the company not to reform the entire production process for each individual project, but to conduct it while maintaining the technical sequence of all stages already embedded in the work.
“The main quality feature of a premium brand today is reliability. It is necessary for large projects and demanding customers. Quality is something that I don’t think is discussed at this level anymore. But reliability is what a company can and should be distinguished by. In fact, this is primarily a personal trait, but when we talk about an enterprise, each of them is headed by a manager, and it consists primarily of people. The way a company works is the result of a symbiosis of characters within it. And obligation should be part of this result.
It is not enough to create a high-quality, technologically advanced and visually aesthetic product - it must be included in the project, always accompanied by deadlines
In my work, I always demand from the furniture manufacturer an individual approach and unique solutions that are difficult to produce. When such an interior item goes through the full cycle of implementation with high quality and uncompromisingly on time, this is reliability in my opinion,” Nataliya Oleksienko shares her thoughts on this issue.
Looking at how the company aesthetically interprets its own product, how it complements it with bold technologies and how it positions itself in the premium segment of furniture brands, one could assume that ELIO approaches the business with artistic trepidation. However, it would not be entirely fair to call them artists – because from the masters who lovingly nurture their own ideas and strive for an aesthetic ideal capable of changing the world, they are distinguished by the absolute practicality with which they do it. Design will never be pure artistic creation for the sole reason that it is applied. This imposes on the work of designers and manufacturers the obligation to take into account project terms and limitations, the complexity of personalization and the preferences of individual customers.
This does not make the design dry — on the contrary, the work of creating interior solutions becomes more complex and multi-level. And if a company of the scale of ELIO manages to match philosophy, business strategy and production processes in such a way that in every detail of the final product you can read the zeitgeist, visual aesthetics, adaptability and reliability, then this only confirms the status of the brand and its well-deserved name.