As a Benefit company, every year we draw up an impact report, in order to explain our entrepreneurial commitment, to evaluate the objectives we had set during the previous year and to set the new objectives for the following one, in accordance with our statute.
What has changed in our company?
“We are becoming different people”. These are the words used by Marco and Lorenzo Braida. It’s not the company business that has changed, but the approach to it.
The questions that we now ask ourselves when working on a project are many more, they are different, deeper and they define a new way of creating furniture. We discovered that the word that defines us the most in no longer chair manufacturers, but seating consultants.
Understanding how to make a product while minimizing waste and finding innovative solutions to meet the needs of both architects, general contractors and designers, as well as the ones of manufacturers and suppliers, these are just some of the aspects that characterise us.
First of all, it is necessary to implement changes in the mindset and thoughts. This can be done by involving other companies of the same sector and leading them to take the same path. In order to do so, exchange, sharing and propagation are fundamental.
Our plan for creating public benefit
When we acquired the status of a Benefit Company, we set ourselves the goal of outlining a more inclusive and sustainable growth process, in order to respond to the growing complexity and urgency in addressing the ever-changing and evolving global challenges.
In carrying out our activities, we pursue some objectives of the UN 2030 Agenda. It represents a universal action plan defined and adopted in 2015 by the United Nations that aims, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to bring a change to People, to the Planet and to the Economy by 2030.
The objectives on which we have decided to focus our commitment are therefore the following:
- disseminating the principles of sustainable development in companies and non-profit organizations through entrepreneurial consultancy and testimony of our own experience;
- applying and promoting a sustainable production system for the environment and the people;
- promoting and supporting the local community.
Cuoricini’s rocking armchair “Oslo” for breastfeeding
This project is particularly important for us because it perfectly combines our production philosophies.
In order to produce the main armchair’s components, we reused some existing materials that were stocked at one of our supplier’s and that were destined to disposal.
It all started when our customer, Cuoricini, asked us to carry out this project. We found out that one of our suppliers had in stock a big quantity of pressed beech plywood, that he had bought for a purchase order that was cancelled. What a coincidence, it was exactly what we needed!
The designer agreed to make some slight changes to the original drawing, this is how we made the backrest and the armrests by using material in storage.
The result? A “win-win-win-win-win” approach and an innovative product both from the point of view of the design and of the construction method, perfectly in line with our principles of conscious design.
“Win-win-win-win-win” because:
- the supplier was able to recover the cost of the material that would otherwise have remained unused or destined to disposal;
- our customer was able to create the desired product at a low cost, immediately becoming competitive on the market and at the same time improving the image;
- we at Concepts by Braida have acquired a new excellent customer and have worked in compliance with our sustainable objectives;
- the community and the environment have benefited, as we have saved material from disposal, thus reducing the impact from an environmental point of view;
- mothers can now relax and enjoy happy moments with their babies.
Concepts by Braida’s chair
For us, the impact report represents much more than a simple document to be drawn up because it contains the very essence of who we are, supported by real and concrete data.
We have talked a lot about concepts in the previous articles. Sometimes we stayed on the abstract, at other times we went more into detail and told you experiences and anecdotes that we experienced first-hand. This is the reason why we like to communicate both through our chairs, but also through words.
Concepts must also be transmitted and we like to seek and find meaning in every step of our work. In the future we will write again, and again we will alternate concrete and abstract, objective and subjective because this is what we love to do. How did we choose to do it? Through what represents us, that is the world of chairs.
Behind a Concepts chair there is never just a chair, but a real concept.
Click here to download the 2021 impact report. *
* The report has been drawn up in cooperation with Hidra srl SB
