With eight European subsidiaries (four of them production sites) and an export ratio between 40 and 50%, this company with its headquarters on the Swiss border is one of the leading brands in the office furniture industry. Today Sedus Stoll is a full-range furniture purveyor, a status it reached for one thing by acquiring the Klöber and Gesika companies, the latter ideally complementing the product portfolio with desks, containers and cabinets. Sedus Stoll’s origins can be traced to a single product: the office chair. In the mid-1920s the firm introduced Europe’s first sprung swivel chair and, just a few years later, swivel castors as well. In the 1970s the focus shifted more and more toward anatomically adaptable chairs, and the company opened its own design department. Today, the pool of knowledge Sedus Stoll has gathered on correct sitting is one of its core competencies. Its most successful product turned out to be the Paris swivel chair, sold over one million times. Designer Michael Kläsener has made some vital contributions to the current extensive office chair line, from the entry model Yeah! to Lisboa in the business class. Wulf Schneider conceived the flexible table systems No Limits and High End, which provide variable configurations and quick assembly and breakdown to optimize work meetings. The Corner series by English designer Peter Wilson, by contrast, upsets our visual habits with its asymmetrical easychairs covered in bicoloured leather. Sedus Stoll develops its catalogue based on sociological studies aiming at elucidating the relationship between the various worlds of home, work and leisure. The new products in the Place 2.5 system are derived from the studies’ findings and are designed, e.g. to enrich the performance- driven office environment with emotional resonance from the leisuretime world. Creative ideas are called for here, such as the portable leaning aid Smile (by Emil Lohrer), whose height can be adjusted just like a bicycle seat. At the heart of the aforementioned system is a table, or “system bench”, called Invitation, a variable tool that encourages creative and playful uses. “Work is child’s play” is a fitting motto for the campaign, which is geared toward activating people’s spontaneity and sense of fun. Turtle Club, the brightly coloured plastic hemisphere by Italian Matteo Thun, goes a long way toward relieving the workaday world of some of its stultifying earnestness.