When a serious injury put an end to the career of professional football goalkeeper Bobby Dekeyser of Belgium in the German Bundesliga in 1990, it didn’t take him long to find a new one. Fresh out of the hospital, the 26-year-old founded a company he called Dedon, which first sold hand-painted skis. In an astonishingly short time, the transition was made to producer of exclusive hand-woven furniture, with around 3,000 employees and 60 million euros in turnover (2005). One key to the happy end was Dekeyser’s parents, a family of entrepreneurs who own a plastic factory. They developed there the synthetic fibre Hularo, which is extremely durable and easy-care and in addition feels pleasant to the touch. When Dekeyser then saw woven furniture from the Philippines at a trade fair, it sparked an idea. Ever since then, Dedon furniture has been manufactured out of synthetic fibres in the East Asian island nation. Other factors contributing to Dekeyser’s meteoric ascent are his team-oriented leadership style, a development department with 100 employees, and thoroughly innovative product design. The designers in charge are Dutchman Frank Ligthart, author of the first Dedon furniture, American Richard Frinier, a specialist in garden furniture, and Swissman Nicolas Thomkins, who studied sculpture in Düsseldorf and whose sculptural model Yin Yang is reminiscent of dunes formed by the wind, but also of Luigi Colani’s trailblazing seating designs from the 1960s. Four kilometres of fibre go into every single chair. It was a very unusual design that inaugurated the Dedon collection. Ligthart’s four easychairs form an Obelisk when stacked, a design that combines originality with striking visual impact. Orbit by Frinier is an oval sofa shell with a cloth canopy as sun shield. Conventional furniture categories blur in these designs. Alongside other, more conventional models that look more like modern versions of colonial furniture, Dekeyser supplies his exclusive clientele with a steady stream of surprises, giving the Dedon brand an unmistakable signature. This is also the case with Frank Ligthart’s most recent brainchild: Leaf, a lounge chair based on the shape of a leaf which rests on only two supports at the head and foot ends, is back-to-nature design at its finest.