It all started with a shock. When in 1995 the legendary furniture firm Vitsoe, famous for a longstanding partnership with Dieter Rams, closed its doors, Rams’ furniture designs were suddenly no longer available. Six prominent German furniture stores reacted spontaneously by getting together and purchasing the licensing rights. Plans were made to continue producing the pieces under the acronym sdr – for “System Furniture Dieter Rams”. The plus stands for the ambition to further develop the designs. House designer Thomas Merkel in particular has revised Rams' designs in a congenial manner, contributing his own input in the process. A start was made with four product lines: the 606 shelf system, 620 easychair (RZ 62), 570 table and 710 cabinets. Due to popular demand, the conference table program 850 was also reworked and continues to be sold very successfully. To complement the program, the 980 container system (k p.519) was then reintroduced in the late 1990s, a cooperation between Rams and Merkel. A guideline behind the entire product range is the principle that the various programs are conceived not only as discrete systems, but can also be combined with one another. According to the well-known credo that Rams espoused for four decades as head designer at Braun, all furniture should be designed in such a way that it does not shout out its presence, but rather melds into the background, standing at the ready to serve when needed. This is regarded at sdr+ as an essential requirement for a lifelong human- furniture liaison. Another advantage to this approach is that the “neutral” designs fit into nearly any environment. There is also a system behind the names: They indicate the year an item was designed. Therefore, the 010 nesting tables were developed by Rams and Merkel in the year 2001, and two years later came the 030 coat racks. All of the pieces are made in Germany, both to guarantee high quality and to be able to react rapidly and flexibly to customer wishes.