#identity card: WOOD YOU is a product line from the Seregno-based company Intarbor, a reference point for woodworking in Brianza for generations. The idea for this new brand came from Altea Calastri (26) who thought of reusing wood veneer to create practical, handcrafted design objects. We interviewed Altea and asked her to tell us about the intuition and vision behind WOOD YOU.
#Flashback: How did your project come about and what challenges await you in the near future?
WOOD YOU was born in 2020 from my passion for wood and my art studies. I knew that I wanted to do creative work in the future (among other things, I run art therapy workshops) and then wood and creativity met. I immediately received support from my family, in particular from my father Gianni and my uncle Renzo; the first few months we did nothing but create prototypes and continue to refine the objects we came up with. The first of our products was the fire starter, which my father had been dreaming of making for some time but had never had the chance. This was soon joined by notebooks, sketchbooks, earrings and necklaces, greeting cards, placemats, prints, cutting boards all made from wood veneer. We are now working on customisable napkin rings and key rings. Everything we sell is made by me, every now and then I ask for a hand especially during fairs.
#Looking Away: you mentioned trade fairs, are they a way for you to expand your market and create links with non-Italian realities?
We were supposed to participate in the first Handicraft Fair back in 2020, but it was obviously skipped because of Covid. This year we will certainly be back, but alongside this important occasion there are other appointments to participate in to network with companies and customers: on 16 and 17 December, for example, we will be in Bergamo at the Factory Market, an event dedicated to the handmade world and independent producers; in September I was invited to speak at an event for architects and designers organised with Ceppi legnami srl. I certainly do a lot to network with other companies in the area, with foreign companies it is a bit more difficult, they are usually customers interested in Intarbor products, for example solid wood tables. Rarely, however, do we come across interesting foreign realities: we happened to have numerous exchanges with an Indian company that produces handmade paper that we met at the Handicrafts Fair.
#Sustainability: How does WOOD YOU invest in sustainability? What are the future prospects in this area?
You can say first of all that sustainability is the reason why this product line was born: there was all this material in the company that would have been thrown away: recycling was therefore the engine that drove us to start and make everything. I would say that the best way for us to invest in sustainability is to remain ourselves: we were recently offered to move production to China, which would have allowed us to reach much larger volumes: a retailer insisted on lowering costs by producing more than 20 thousand notebooks, while today, by partnering with other companies in the area, we manage to create 11 thousand at most. Obviously we refused, not only because we want to maintain sustainable production, but also because doing so would mean giving up our specificity, that which distinguishes us: artisanal and Italian production from a to zeta. We are also a bit radical in this: to give just one more example, we were also offered to use an essence that we did not have, but only the smell of wood can accompany the sight of our objects, so this offer was also turned down.
