Furniture showroom on wheels hits London streets
Dynamic’s furniture showroom on wheels hits London streets with its trade-only range, including soft seating and PET felt samples.
Most furniture showrooms have a postcode, but Dynamic’s has a number plate. The company is taking its 1966 Routemaster, dubbed the Dynamibus, to Shoreditch Design Week, which runs from 15th to 17th September.
The bus will be parked outside House of ICON at Shoreditch Town Hall, showcasing Dynamic’s trade-only range, including soft seating and PET felt samples from its SCH! acoustic collection.
Dynamic has traded from Northampton for twenty years, selling only through the trade, never direct. Its soft seating and acoustic ranges are designed and manufactured in Northampton, while its customers are spread across the country.
Designers want to sit on the product and push at the foam, look at the stitching. Nearly every conversation gets easier once the product is in the room with you.”
Verlander opted for a unique approach to showcasing his products, choosing a bus over a traditional showroom. “A showroom asks everybody to come to you,” he says. “The bus goes to them. It can be outside a designer’s office on a Tuesday and at a design festival on the Friday. And it’s hard to ignore a Routemaster.”
The exterior of the bus remains untouched, but the interior was refitted as a showroom, featuring soft seating and height-adjustable desking on the lower deck and task and operator chairs on the upper deck.
One of the challenges was working around the wheel arches, which intrude into the lower deck. Dynamic created custom units to sit over them, allowing the arches to blend into the layout.
Verlander notes that the bus’s design taught them more about planning a space than any traditional showroom. The vehicle itself demonstrates the company’s approach to furniture design, with almost every major component having been swapped out at least once.
Dynamic’s seating is built on the same principle, with units that can be easily reconfigured and parts that can be replaced on site. The soft seating carries a ten-year guarantee, and Verlander emphasizes the importance of considering what happens when a single part needs replacing, rather than just how long something will last.
