Design Auteur: Kenneth Cobonpue

Interview Misha Lecaros & Angel Guerrero | as featured in adobo magazine’s January/February 2013 issue
Photography Neal Oshima

 

ADOBO For the longest time, you held off from opening a dedicated outlet for your brand, an approach you seem to have changed with the upcoming launch of your Greenbelt store. Is this a sign of expanding your horizons to reach a bigger market?

 

COBONPUE Definitely. Trade shows are for the industry, they’re not public. We need to advertise, because it’s not just furniture we’re doing now. We know what we want to do, it’s just a matter of doing it. We’ve always positioned ourselves as a kind of tropical/modern furniture, so we always sell that romantic, island lifestyle. It’s something that people consider romantic about Asia, something they remember from their travels. That’s what we try to inject into our campaigns. This is romantic, Asian, contemporary furniture.

 

 

ADOBO You once described your pieces as simple, but complicated. Can you explain that?

 

COBONPUE For every piece, they’re very simple when you look at them. But when you look at the detail that goes into making it, you see that everything is there for a purpose. If there’s something that makes our work here unique, it would be the craft, the beauty of the handmade. It’s something different and unique to us. You can tell when something’s been done on a machine. Here, everything is handmade, and that’s what we try to highlight. Even if we use industrial materials, the application is still handmade – that’s the craft we want to promote.

 

 

 

ADOBO What’s the distinction between Kenneth Cobonpue (the company) and Hive?

 

COBONPUE The furniture is under Kenneth Cobonpue, (while) Hive is a design collective where external designers who want to contribute products can contribute, but not necessarily under my name. Under Hive, we have seven active designers. We looked all around the world for designers…they used to only be Filipino, then we made it Asian, and now they’re from all around the world.

 

 

ADOBO You straddle the line between craftsmanship and mass production. How do you maintain that balance?

 

COBONPUE Well, when you say mass production, what we do really isn’t, like on the scale of say, China, we could never do that, or even the way it’s done in other industrial factories. There’s always a limit to handmade things.

 

 

ADOBO You’ve mentioned that there are some times, some countries, where you’ll be the only Asian guy around. How do you assert yourself that you’re someone to be taken seriously? Like during your recent launch in Colombia?

 

COBONPUE It’s easier when there are no preconceived notions of our country or what to expect (laughs)! They’ll see you as Asian, sure, but it’s not like where, if they see you as Japanese, the expectations are high up there. On the other hand, they don’t have any notions of you as being from the “Third World” or whatever, and that makes things easier. In Colombia, they told me, “You don’t have to worry, this is not America. Just go out there, they’ll treat you with respect.” ”Surprisingly, they’re very price-conscious, not very much into luxury brands. There’s no Louis Vuitton, Prada…it’s all about local, Latin brands, amazing! And the great thing about our brand being from the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, it’s like we’re part of the same family in a way.

 

 

 

ADOBO Funny how that worked out! How do you choose which markets to penetrate, which countries to expand to?

 

COBONPUE Before, (furniture) companies used to buy from the Philippines, but they would label the products with their own brands, literally ripping off the tags to be replaced with theirs.

 

 

ADOBO Is this before you started branding your products with your name?

 

COBONPUE Yeah! It still happens, in fact, and we’ve had to drop certain clients. They’ll go from country to country, see good designs from companies that aren’t known yet, and they’ll put their own name on the pieces. Especially when we were just starting, there was no value (in unknown brands), but now there’s value.

 

 

ADOBO Well, it’s one thing to take credit for the actual products, what about knockoffs?

 

COBONPUE On knockoffs, the countries that are knocking us off would be, here, Indonesia, Vietnam, but mostly Indonesia. Even if they can’t duplicate the quality, they’ll copy the look. Like the Yoda chair, they’ll make one that looks right, but when you sit in it (shakes head). But they don’t put my brand on it, they just want the look. And then there are the copycats; a lot of regional companies now are doing similar looks to ours, and even some of the European brands.

 

 

ADOBO What’s your response to that?

 

COBONPUE We actually go after them. We have three cases now. The court issues a cease-and-desist.

 

 

ADOBO But if people are copying your stuff, surely that says something about your having attained a certain level of recognition?

 

COBONPUE Oh we still have a lot to do. In the industry, we may be at par with the Italians, but for people outside, they have no idea, even here in our own country! When you go to people’s houses, you might see something that may be Italian, but not Filipino. We still have a lot of work to do.

 

 

ADOBO With the industry recognition, at least, on your side, how has this affected the perception of your brand at the foreign trade shows?

 

COBONPUE Well, now some brands are questioning why we’re able to get or are allowed prime space in the exhibition halls, because when we first started, we weren’t considered a threat. They would put us at the back, but now, we’re even up front sometimes.  And we’re the only Asian, so they get jealous. For us, it’s a great opportunity.

 

 

ADOBO How have the countries you’ve stayed in, the USA, Italy and Germany influenced your work now?

 

COBONPUE Well, I learned the basics of design in New York, but it was really living in Europe that honed my modernist leanings. The US, the market there is still very traditional, there’s a love for old things. In Europe, they have too much of that (laughs). So I look towards Europe more. In Germany, I learned about formalism, very clean, functional designs, and that was my main influence. I took that and married it with everything that’s crazy and chaotic about us. I also learned there about quality and production. a