When I started Finn & Elder way back in 2020 it was because we saw a huge hole in the market for real quality outdoor furniture, the kind of thing that was comfortable but looked great too and I like everyone else I spoke to was sick of rattan furniture that was everywhere.
I had seen some fabulous furniture in some of European counterparts but when I looked at the pricing options there were two problems
1. It was ridiculously expensive when you worked out the price of a set, getting up above €15k 2. Even at those prices the wait time for installation was 16-20 weeks
So there it was, my two things that I needed to combat if I was going to put my existing designs into play. I loved the idea of creating a range that was mainly timber, was beautifully tactile with the best quality outdoor fabrics we could find. We had sourced the fabrics, produced mainly in Spain and started producing the prototypes but I had to make sure that these two criteria were matched. It was never going to be a low cost product and honestly it shouldn’t undervalue the valuable resource of timber especially the teak that we needed to make this both hardworking and weatherproof but it had to attainable and it had to be available within short notice. Who wants to wait weeks and months when our summers are precious and often short lived.
So here we are in our fourth year, with so many wonderful clients and so many gardens that we have added to the F&E family. We are in the enviable position now that lots of the landscape designers and architects showcase our furniture in their designs and so when we have clients come and see the furniture they are immediately drawn to one piece and when we look at the designs, its there and testament to the quality of the Designers in Ireland and the UK, how well they know and understand their clients.
This years collection for 2024 has been about going beyond our comfort zone, creating things that would have been on my wishlist and looking at how friends houses were changing, talking to my interior design colleagues about and incorporated those into this years designs. These include tables that are adaptable, lots of block colour in greens. pinks, blues and oranges. I was tempted to do yellow too but haven’t found the right set to do it in but I think I will soon. The response from the media has been amazing, we’ve been blown by how much coverage we’ve been gifted in lots of publications Ive admired for many years, who would have thought.
One of things we’ve really had problems with is covers for the pieces, making our own with such small runs was costing too much and off the shelf ones were either not fitting well enough or we’d have to buy in huge quantities but now we have been able to organise for 70% off our products, still working on some of the really big pieces but we’ve almost everything organised and thats in production now.
So I wanted to sign off with my own thoughts and a huge thank you. I love this wonderful brand, its brought me so much joy and the ability to express my creativity, to develop a style and a flair that was buried to work with my husband on garden designs and develop new styles around the gardens he designs and builds. To work alongside my eldest daughter, Ella who now takes care of the day to day running of the company, ensuring everything runs smoothly and the person most of you meet if you do get to visit us.
Earlier this year we finished building our new supersized warehouse which is pretty darn full at this stage of all our wonderful furniture ready to adorn your gardens, that one tick, its readily available and now we have the space to keep that promise I made and the price promise is still something I work on all the time, is it aspirational, yes absolutely but is out of reach, no and so many of you that are placing orders are testament to this and thats what I set out to do. So thanks to each and every one of you, for helping me believe in myself and for loving what we do as much as I do,
Lots of love
