Muji - Swedish Style
Brands We Love: Part 5
By now you’re probably tired of us telling you that we love black and we love white but we haven’t yet mentioned that we love Muji. There’s nothing to match the joy of spending a whole day inside one of the larger Muji stores in Tokyo; checking out the furniture, clothing, bicycles and office supplies, having a meal in the restaurant, seeing the latest show in their art gallery and finally taking a walk around a life size replica of one of the Muji homes that can be purchased together with plots of land. And don’t even get us started on the Muji car that they developed in conjunction with Nissan. If only they'd hurry up and open up some fully resourced Muji stores in Europe and the US.
Given our passion for Muji’s style and for all things monochrome, imagine our delight when we discovered Granit, a chain of stores in Sweden, and were able to combine our two loves in one.
We’re told that Granit was born in 1997 out of pure frustration. Mikael Andersson felt that it was easy to find nice things to fill your life with, but hard to find something good to keep them in. That trying to give order to things was so unnecessarily difficult was an equation that simply didn´t add up, so he decided to do something about the situation.
Inside a Granit store you’ll discover hundreds of smart and stylish solutions for storage made from either cardboard, plastic or wicker. You’ll also find bathroom and kitchen products, teas and spices, and textiles and office supplies. All of Granit’s products share four common characteristics; practical function, simple shape, modest price and quality of manufacture.
What’s the reason for sticking to black, white, grey and natural? Apparently this is because Granit wants our purchases to last for a long time and these colors will fit almost any home interior regardless of what future fashions may bring.
Clearly Granit wants a visit to one of their stores to be a memorable experience and have paid careful attention to every last detail. You’ll find fresh flowers, candles, incense, music and various free samples. You’ve got to love a company that even selects food that fits into their strict color scheme. Granit sell a salt that’s black and white. It's made of seasalt, aramealgae, black sesame, kalinji, black olives and horseradish.
All in all, it’s a formula that seems to be working well, as Granit now have stores in Stockholm (five of them), Gothenburg and Malmo and have recently started expanding internationally with the recent launch of two new stores in Oslo. We expect to see many more.
Comments