Can you introduce Duplex Studio?
Duplex Studio is a design and eco-responsible furniture production company. Our goal is to offer furniture—meaning pieces, lighting, and other everyday objects—with a low environmental impact at a relatively affordable budget.
To do this, we collaborate with local companies to design our products using industrial offcuts and reclaimed materials. And we offer objects that are produced locally, here in Brussels, in our studio.
For now, our clients are mainly B2B: hospitality professionals, co-living / co-working spaces, and architects who call on our services for interior design projects.
You have just completed a fundraising round via the Economic Transition Fund. What projects and investments do you want to carry out with this financing?
Initially, our activity was focused on design and conception. Recently, we have revised our business model to focus more on production. The financing, which is actually a co-financing with a bank loan, has therefore allowed us to develop our activity, particularly by making the necessary investments for production, as well as research and development.
At this stage, we already have two furniture collections that we are marketing: a collection of stone lamps, for which we recover offcuts from the Maffle quarry and surplus stainless steel tubes from New Laser, a company based in Malmédy. And a second collection, developed around chairs, tables, and benches, which is produced from flooring offcuts from the company Arbony based in Liège.
And currently, we are working on four new collections, in partnership with Rotor DC and another company that we will talk about soon.
How is your business model linked to the concept of economic transition?
Today, up to 70% of the environmental impact of furniture—depending on production sectors—is associated with raw materials. This mainly concerns the energy needed to extract the material, process it, and then transport it.
And this represents between 50 and 60% of the price of a finished object. By using raw materials that have already been extracted or processed, we can reduce both economic and ecological aspects, and thus bring production back locally.
The second axis of our business model is the agility of our production system. Thanks to our partnership with Mekanika, we can machine a maximum range of materials such as wood, metal, plastic, etc.
What challenges are faced in the eco-design sector?
Currently, many young designers are working on the design of eco-responsible products. But one of the recurring problems is the lack of scalability in the proposed designs. And this is really the challenge for the future: being able to offer furniture designed and thought out to have the lowest possible environmental impact, while also integrating it into a production logic that will have a real impact on society.
For example, in certain material processing industries, there are a lot of raw material offcuts that are incinerated, whereas they could be used to produce furniture. And this is our vision: to recover all these offcuts, which are considered waste, and reinject them into a local production of eco-responsible furniture.
What are, for you, the advantages of collaborating with a financial partner such as finance&invest.brussels?
In terms of support, it was very professional, and it is pleasant to collaborate with an actor that took the time to analyze and understand our business model. Then, the financing from finance&invest.brussels also provided us with the guarantees to access bank financing, which is not easy today for young companies.
And finally, being part of the Brussels ecosystem is also interesting in terms of networking and access to other benefits made available by the Brussels-Capital Region through various hubs, such as Hub, BeCircular, CityDev, etc.
A final word?
Since last year, we have been organizing an exhibition on eco-design in collaboration with « Design September » and the MAD. This year, we have invited around twenty designers who will exhibit their creations during the 3rd and 4th weekends of September at Reset, near Place des Congrès.
If you want to discover a vision of furniture where design is combined with respect for the environment at an affordable price, join us!
