Everyone knows IKEA furniture. Everyone has it at home. The brand is growing and expanding. There are now a total of 433 department stores worldwide, and around a dozen are added every year. In the past, it was the Statue of Liberty that travellers to the New World saw first - today it is the yellow and blue IKEA in Brooklyn ... The Swede Joacim Gustavsson has constructed and designed coveted and even award-winning furniture for the world's largest furniture store for many years. His "Nordmyra" chair can even be found in the IKEA museum and is a popular prop in American films. Nevertheless, Gustavsson gave up his prestigious job there to design boats.
BOOTE: Mr Gustavsson, as the designer of a large global series, why were you drawn to such a small luxury brand as Nimbus?
Joacim Gustavsson: I've always had a close relationship with the sea. That's why I did an apprenticeship as a wooden boat builder straight after leaving school. My father couldn't understand that at the time, because it had never happened in our family before. Nobody had anything to do with boats. But I really wanted to learn how to build traditional boats. I was 15 years old at the time.
So why didn't you stay in boatbuilding?
When I finished my apprenticeship in 1991, it was a bad time for boat builders. Boats weren't selling very well. I even applied for a job at Nimbus at the time, but they had no vacancies and their capacity utilisation was too low to take on another boat builder.
So you had to find a new way for yourself ...
Exactly, I reorientated myself. I found working with materials exciting, but I didn't want to wield a plane myself. So I went to university and did a master's degree in interior design. That's how I ended up in furniture design and at IKEA as a freelance designer.
That must have been quite an exciting task.
It was a really exciting time, because IKEA has a really interesting working environment. The company is full of energy and creativity, and you're not afraid to try something unusual. I learnt a lot about perfection, but also about business thinking. And what it means to develop a model series. A lot of fields that you don't usually have any contact with as a designer. I've always wanted to be a creative person and IKEA has helped me to develop. A school for life.
How did your time at IKEA shape you?
At IKEA, you are not only a designer, but also a project manager. You manage the entire project you are assigned, from concept to production. Firstly, a plan is drawn up as to how much the product may cost. You also determine how the model range is set up and where the product can be built most cost-effectively. The entire business model behind the piece of furniture is one of the project manager's tasks. That was a good lesson in how the whole background works. From my idea to the finished product in the shop.
And yet you were drawn back to the water and the boats.
Yes, after a few years inland, I simply had to return to the coast and Gothenburg. I started at Nimbus there in 2007 and was initially responsible for interior design. A new crisis hit in 2008. Stupid timing for me - to start when everything was going downhill.
But it also went uphill again?
In 2012, Nimbus got a new owner and I saw this as an opportunity to take on a little more responsibility in the design process. I also wanted to take care of the exterior design. I am now a designer in the management of the shipyard and, together with a colleague, am responsible for the overall image of the Nimbus range.
Compared to IKEA, Nimbus is more of a smaller company ...
...And that has advantages: Everything is quicker and more direct. We work in a small team, which is very efficient. Especially when you as a designer are part of the management and can influence changes in production and budget yourself. Unlike in a large company, where you always have to come to management with questions and suggestions and get them approved. This is the reason why we were able to overhaul the entire fleet in a short space of time. We have brought eight new models onto the market in two and a half years.
The boats don't look like they come from IKEA.
No, the target group is completely different! That's also the first rule: find out what the target group looks like. The design must be visually chic and appealing to everyone, but also cleverly tailored to the respective customer group. IKEA has always been about modern and affordable everyday objects. Nimbus, on the other hand, is a high-class brand. Nevertheless, the approach is similar: you first try to analyse the customer.
So there are parallels with IKEA?
The philosophy of Nimbus is actually similar to that of IKEA: we build very democratically. We don't want a luxury product. A high-quality premium product - but the fishermen should like our boat just as much as the family. Even the experienced sailor should be impressed and satisfied. That is our benchmark. The look sometimes follows the purpose.
What does your normal daily routine look like?
My job is to take care of solving problems that arise during development. When I get home, for example, we have to redesign the roof because we had some problems with it and have now found a new solution. So the day consists of lots of small meetings with team members. I look over their shoulders or they come to me and ask if their work is OK. I am part of a team every day. It's not like I sit alone on a rock and think about good design.
How does such a development process work?
This is actually also similar to IKEA: you usually already have an existing range, whether chairs or boats. We look at them and ask ourselves: Is it still good from today's perspective? Does it still fit into today's world in terms of performance, features, space and fashion? Are there new ideas or new solutions for the requirements? And what does it look like from a business point of view, are we still earning money with the product? A model doesn't always have to make money by selling - sometimes a model is just a good addition to the range and you sell a lot more larger boats with the small boat in your repertoire. So the design process for a new boat always starts with analysing the existing range.
What happens next?
We then consider whether a new design is needed at all, or whether a facelift would be sufficient. The average lifespan of a boat at Nimbus is eight years. After five years, we try to do a facelift. These intervals come from statistics on how long the boats sell well. There is also a certain budget for each model that we can spend to keep the boats modern and fresh.
Suppose you need a new model. How do you approach the design?
It rarely starts with one model, usually with the plan for the entire series. We look at the range and consider what we need to do to keep it efficient. In doing so, we sometimes realise that a boat no longer quite meets the standard and needs to be revised. This gap in the range then naturally results in length, width, volume and so on. The first step is a rough study of what the new boat should look like. Only then do we start drawing. Some designers simply take a pencil in their hand and swing it creatively over white paper. However, you often only realise at the end that the boat looks nice, but doesn't fit the specifications at all. So I set clear cornerstones on the computer and draw into them.
So you design the boat all by yourself?
No, not at all. Once the basic structure has been finalised, the design team starts working on detailed solutions early on, such as the bow thruster or the windows. They keep coming back to me and asking: "Is that more or less what you had in mind?" I take care of some things more, some less. The dashboard, for example, is always important to me and I try to come up with lots of good detailed solutions. But as I said, the design is very democratic. The team develops it together, not just me alone. I develop the concept and then take the lead when it comes to decisions, but we develop the boat together.
How can we imagine the team?
It consists of eight to ten people, almost all specialists in certain areas. We have a specialist for the hull who does all the calculations, then an electronics engineer, one of them takes care of the CAD files that we send to the factory that mills the wooden parts. Some work on the boat all the time, others only until their specialised field is completed.
How long does the development take? Several years?
It takes 13 to 15 months from the idea to the finished boat. We are pretty fast, especially compared to car manufacturing. In car manufacturing, there are many prototypes and development stages, then crash tests that slow down or overturn development until a car is ready for series production at the end. There's none of that in boat building. It's simply a case of: let's go!
Have you learnt anything from furniture making?
I think my sense of three-dimensional thinking and ergonomics. Everything has to be comfortable as well as pretty. I can't think of anything stylistically. Perhaps functionality, because on a boat it's always about utilising the limited space as well and functionally as possible. But when it comes to unusual solutions, Nimbus is more traditional. If we were bolder, I could contribute more of my experience at IKEA. But of course we can't be too crazy with a luxury brand.
That was certainly easier at IKEA ...
Yes, the boundaries were very wide there. We were able to really let off steam in terms of design.
This article appeared in BOOTE issue 07/202o and was revised by the editorial team in December 2023.
