A diamond necklace wearing-Chihuahua on a sheepskin rug is, perhaps, not what most skirting board suppliers would picture on the front of their brochure. But then foroom of Austria is not your usual skirting board supplier.
The company’s founder Thomas Kleedorfer, who also features in the brochure in a moody shot clad in black, with ‘girlfriend and foroom-guru’ Pia, sees skirting boards as an art form. And he doesn’t mince his words about manufacturers who, he feels, do not give them the same exalted status.
Recently, he declaims, skirting boards have been viewed merely ‘as practical and necessary interior fittings’. Most have been ‘tasteless and utterly non-descript’.
‘The feel-good factor of the average skirting board is zero – it is soulless and does nothing for the atmosphere of the room,’ he said.
Foroom, he continues in the brochure, has a mission to shake up the market. It’s given skirting boards ‘a new identity and a new name’.
‘Our products feature sophisticated designs and an imaginative interplay of colours and materials,’ he said. ‘They’re playful, fun, eye-catching, distinguished or laid-back. They give a new touch to the surroundings we live in.’
Before, he says, skirting boards were the ugly duckling of interior design; foroom has transformed them into the swan.
‘Foroom enhances the quality of life, both in the home and the office,’ said Mr Kleedorfer. ‘Customers confirm that it has a positive impact on their everyday surroundings. My idea has established a new, richer room culture with the skirting board acting as the frame. It’s a great feeling to have achieved this.’
How this translates in terms of products is a huge selection of skirting board designs blending MDF with varnished solid hardwood (obeche) and veneered timber, plus glass, metal, plastic, crystal, Perspex, fabric, leather, ceramic, stone and even papier maché trims and accessories. Ranges featured in the brochure (and foroom also does bespoke one-offs) include an MDF board with a psychedelic veneer finish and aluminium trim along the top; a simple, curve-topped walnut-veneered MDF, stained solid wood with gold metal trim running along the centre; and a solid plain timber with random sections of vertical routing. There’s also a red stained timber skirting peppered with gold metal sun ‘medallions’ and ranges for nurseries and children’s bedrooms, such as a dark blue board with white timber beading and a pink range picked out with wooden ‘buttons’.
The designs, said Mr Kleedorfer, are inspired by ‘trends in magazines and trade shows’ and also from ‘keeping our eyes open’.
As befits such an out of the ordinary business, its founder has had a distinctive career path. He started out in sports goods distribution before a spell in product development in food manufacture, where he still has an involvement. His choice of work, he maintains, has always been shaped around the fact that he has ‘fun building up ideas’.
Foroom, he said, is essentially an ideas business’, employing just three ‘partners’. Production is farmed out to contracted manufacturers, but only those, insists Mr Kleedorfer, with the skills to get involved with him and Pia in the design and development process.
After leafing through the brochure, there’s no doubting that Mr Kleedorfer sees skirting’s visual appeal as paramount. It comes as a bit of a surprise, therefore, to find him stressing that his products are also straightforward to fit and do not sacrifice functionality for aesthetics. They use an ‘invisible’ assembly system, have cut-outs to accommodate electrical and plumbing services and can incorporate sockets for phone, IT equipment, TV and sound systems.
Foroom also has a decidedly practical steer on the office/commercial market. It produces luminescent fire-safety skirting for corridors and can include corporate logos and coloured or illuminated direction and other signage. It even supplies boards with integrated photoelectric security and traffic monitoring systems! The foroom approach is evidently paying dividends. The company sells in six European countries, either by traditional channels or online (via www.foroom.com) and it has displays in over 5,000 stores.
Rolling up the market
‘Metre by metre, we are rolling up the market with orders from companies like INKU and Home Dekor [leading home product retail chains], putting foroom on the road to success as the rising star of the interior decoration market,’ said Mr Kleedorfer.
‘Our design strategy, the collection itself and its vast range of creative combinations have captured the imagination and won the battle for clients’ hearts and homes. In living rooms, nurseries, offices and boardrooms, foroom skirting boards are all the rage.’
Currently, he added, the company is not selling to the UK ‘but of course, we would like to’.
Foroom is now looking at developing other interior fittings, including cable housings. But it is not about to put skirting boards on the back burner and has plans to go even further in terms of design ‘wit, elegance and flexibility’.
‘We are already designing new and surprising collections,’ said Pia. ‘The interplay of colours, materials and form knows no bounds.’
‘Currently we have a project running with Schott-Rohrglass,’ added Mr Kleedorfer. ‘We want to develop skirting boards made out of glass.’
