Application of heritage artisan skills is what we do. Sustainability of natural material is what we stand for. Environmental, economic and social well-being is our mission. Our company was founded in 2000 by two partners, Paul Hoeve and Lay Koon Tan, whose mission was to create meaningful, sustainable and exciting employment opportunities for people in developing countries. In an age of rampant globalisation and at the height of the dotcom bubble, it seemed valuable to reaffirm the value of artisanal skills, antithetical to faceless mass production. It was key to emphasise the inextricable links between nature and human endeavour. We also felt it an absolute necessity to combat the mistaken view that developing countries are primarily a source of cheap labour and low quality.
We are Swiss-based; with our main production facilities in the Philippines and our main R&D facilities in Germany and Switzerland. The majority of our 200+ impressive employees are skilled artisans. We mainly source our unique natural materials from Asia, Africa and Europe.
We produce luxury objects that derive from the beauty and sustainability of nature, while preserving valuable heritage skills and quality. The very name Nature Squared implies a perfect union between tradition and technical innovation. Mother Nature provides us with a wide portfolio of materials, ranging from the mundane to the unusual. Some of our favourites include eggshell, seeds and bark, tropical seashells, precious stones and even exotic leathers and feathers.
Ultimately, we are a company with developmental objective, and sustainability is always top of our priority list. We always ensure the sustainable future of all materials before using them. We only use those that are abundant and not endangered, protected or threatened. Moreover, it is not just about recycling and repurposing, but rather rethinking these supplies entirely. We work mostly with by-products from other industries, such as farming and fishing, so it reduces what would normally be considered waste. Most importantly, sourcing from other industries allows us to foster local developing economies. In the case of shells, for example, we can pay fishermen for a part they would normally throw away. This in turn gives them an alternative source of income, which then encourages them to limit their overfishing, which goes back to ecological sustainability.
Centuries old techniques are our source of inspiration and what has perfected our skills, which we enhance with today’s ingenuity and innovation.
Luxury is often equated with rarity and ultimate quality. However, we believe that marrying beautiful hand craftsmanship with the unique characteristic of any natural product provides the ultimate in rarity.
We are always thrilled to collaborate with luxury brands who, like us, wish to harness the exquisite beauty of natural materials in a sustainable way. We aspire to help expel the falsity that luxury is a predicate of rarity and believe firmly in our conviction that beauty can be derived from our ecosystem in a sustainable and environmentally friendly fashion.
Recently, we have had the great honour of collaborating with Rolls-Royce and have been commissioned by them to design and create a one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted art piece, to be installed on the phantom’s dashboard. It is the first time the phantom’s dashboard has be redesigned in the last 100 years.
We were inspired to work with natural, luxurious materials that were previously impossible to incorporate into cars, and immediately thought of feathers.
We hand-selected 3,000 tail feathers for their beauty and iridescence, and the result was quite breath-taking. The feathers emulated the musculature of a natural wing, creating an atmospheric artwork with life-like movement, bringing beauty and fragility to the product.
We work in 3 market segments: Interiors, Luxury Brands and Solutions. In each market our activities are characterised by our stand-out hallmarks of luxury, quality and design.
We create a diverse range of items such as wall panelling, furniture and components, bathtub and flooring for projects within these markets. Our Luxury Brands division is partnered with leading manufacturers from the automotive and accessories sector, into whose product ranges we integrate our unique and exquisite natural materials.
We capitalise on our design expertise, translating our in-depth knowledge of materials into product design.
Our Solutions division supports the technical needs of Interiors and Luxury Brands, as well as developing its own products for sale in areas like Flammability.
We meet the highest quality expectations. We achieve this not only with our impressive aesthetic execution, but also by meeting technical and regulatory standards, and managing high-profile projects. At Nature Squared our Business is based on Solutions. Our Research and Development divisions create and develop technological solutions that take inspiration from nature to manufacture exquisite surfaces and luxury products, making us ideally placed to become a leader in the bespoke market.
We have a large research and development unit, who are constantly working to research and develop new technological solutions for our products in order to ensure they are made efficiently and sustainably. We work with a talented group of scientists and researchers to discover new materials to be used and innovative ways in which to use them. But most importantly, we bring together this research with our focus on utilising sustainable materials. In doing so, we cater for a consumer market that is increasingly interested in environmentalism and saving the planet; a market that seeks out sustainable products. Because we research and develop our own solutions for products, they are bespoke and unique, and attractive to buyers on the hunt for products that are both sustainable and aesthetically appealing.
