Broom by StarckStarck is French. Suddenly, leftovers are the main course.Make chairs lightweight and make them strong, build them for a lifetime. That is Emeco’s mission. Aluminum is the obvious choice, engineered for practical purposes, designed by real people. Forming, welding, grinding, heat-treating, finishing, anodizing are just a few of the 77 steps it takes to build an Emeco chair. No one else makes chairs this way. It takes a human eye to know when the process is done right, and it takes human hands to get it that way. Their goal: Make recycling obsolete and keep making things that last. In 2006 Coca-Cola and Emeco collaborated to solve an environmental problem: Up-cycling consumer waste into a sustainable, timeless, classic chair. Made of 111 recycled PET bottles, the 111 Navy Chair is a story of innovation. GR Shop offers the Navy chair in many fun colours and almost 100 other Emeco chairs and tables. Emeco Hudson Barstool With Arms Emeco 20-06 Stacking Chair
Emeco Heritage Stacking Chair Emeco Nine-0 Swivel Chair Emeco Heritage Rocking Armchair Emeco 20-06 Square Cafe Table Emeco Navy Counter Stool With Arms Emeco Navy Arm Chair With Natural Wood Seat Emeco Navy Upholstered Swivel Chair Emeco Occasional Table TABL-18 Emeco Navy Counter Stool With Natural Wood Seat and Arms Emeco Navy Semi-Upholstered Arm Chair Emeco 1951 Counter Stool Emeco Hudson Counter Stool With Arms Emeco Icon Counter Stool Emeco Hudson Swivel Chair Emeco Nine-0 Stacking Counter Stool Emeco 20-06 Counter Stool Emeco Navy Arm Chair Emeco Kong Counter Stool Emeco 20-06 Round Bar-Height Table Emeco Navy Child's Chair Emeco Counter Stool STOL-24 Emeco 111 Navy Chair (priced each, sold in sets of 2) Emeco Navy Semi-Upholstered Chair Emeco Superlight Chair SUPER-X Emeco Lancaster Dining Table Emeco Hudson Arm Chair Emeco Round Brushed Cafe Table
Emeco Hudson Rocking Chair Emeco Nine-0 Stacking Chair Emeco Heritage Stacking Arm Chair Emeco Nine-0 Swivel Armchair Emeco 20-06 Round Cafe Table Emeco Kong Barstool With Arms Emeco Navy Counter Stool With Natural Wood Seat Emeco Navy Upholstered Arm Chair Emeco Occasional Table TABL-24 Emeco Lancaster Stacking Chair Emeco Navy Semi-Upholstered Swivel Arm Chair Emeco Hudson Swivel Arm Chair Emeco Heritage Rocking Chair Emeco 20-06 Bar Stool Emeco Navy Counter Stool Emeco Kong Counter Stool With Arms Emeco Navy Chair With Natural Wood Seat Emeco Navy Upholstered Chair Emeco Navy Barstool With Natural Wood Seat with Arms Emeco Navy Semi-Upholstered Swivel Chair Emeco 1951 Stacking Chair Emeco Hudson Counter StoolIn 1944, Wilton Carlyle Dinges founded the Electrical Machine and Equipment Company (Emeco) in Hanover Pennsylvania utilizing the skills of local craftsman. During WWII the U.S government gave him a big assignment, make chairs that could withstand water, salt air and sailors.
Aluminum was the obvious choice, engineered for practical purposes, designed by real people. Emeco named the chair with a number: 1006, some people call it the Navy chair. We still call it the Ten-o-six. Forming, welding, grinding, heat-treating, finishing, anodizing- just a few of the 77 steps it takes to build an Emeco chair. Make recycling obsolete and keep making things that last. + View Collection+ Visit emeco.netSubstitution for Emeco Chairs? Good Questions: Substitution for Emeco Chairs? We lust after Emeco chairs for our dining room (above, right), but at $395 a pop, buying six of them seems a little extreme. We just got the new CB2 catalog in the mail, and saw their "bandit chair" (above, left), which is obviously inspired by Emeco. The price is definitely better ($119), but we don't have a CB2 nearby and I'm curious if you or any of your readers have had hands on experience with these chairs. If we love Emeco, will we feel like cheapskates for the next decade for buying the Bandit?
(Note: Include a pic of your problem and your question gets posted first. Email questions and pics with QUESTIONS in subject line to: newyork(at)apartmenttherapy(dot)com) Clay — we first want to point you in the direction of the DWR Dining Sale that lets you save 15% off the purchase of 6 or more dining chairs (you can even mix and match!). Why not get 2 of the Emeco chairs you lust after and complete the 6 with 4 of CB2's Bandit? This will save you money and you won't feel like you sacrificed your top choice. Anyone else have other options or suggestions?Product images by Emeco and Restoration Hardware. The Emeco 1006, also called the “Navy chair,” is an aluminum side chair produced by the Electric Machine and Equipment Company (Emeco) in Hanover, Pa. The chair was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in World War II for use on warships: The procurement contract specified that the chair had to be able to withstand torpedo blasts to the side of a destroyer. After the war, Emeco began selling its Navy chair to the public.
The original design never sold particularly well, but over the years Emeco’s chair carved out a small niche as a piece of high-end (that is, expensive) design of the sort you’ll see featured in Dwell magazine. That is until Restoration Hardware got into the act. Recently the big furniture retailer began selling a look-alike Navy chair, which it refers to as the “standard aluminum side chair.” (It previously referred to it as the “naval chair.”) The Emeco original is $455. The Restoration knockoff is $129. At that lower price—and given Restoration Hardware’s ubiquity and marketing muscle—the Navy chair was poised to go mainstream. That was something Emeco was not going to take sitting down. The company has now filed suit, accusing Restoration Hardware of violating its trademarks. Restoration Hardware has apparently responded by taking the chair off its website. The lawsuit is very likely meritless. And it points to the problem in granting overly broad rights in names and designs via the trademark system—especially since trademarks, unlike copyrights or patents, can last forever.
Let’s turn to the dispute itself. First, Emeco’s claim to a trademark on the term “Navy chair” is weak. Because over the years that has become a generic label for this type of all-metal, 1940s-style chair, rather than a name that immediately conjures up a Pennsylvania company named Emeco. And in American law, if a product’s name becomes generic—such as aspirin, linoleum, thermos, or zipper—it can no longer be trademarked. Lawyers call this “genericide,” and the fear of becoming generic is one reason Kleenex is always reminding you that they sell “Kleenex-brand tissues.” The makers of Kleenex are trying to save their brand from genericide by reminding you that Kleenex is a particular brand of tissues, not a generic name for tissues. In any event, Restoration Hardware isn’t using the name “Navy chair” anymore, so even if Emeco wins on this claim, it’s a pyrrhic victory—Restoration Hardware will be entitled to go on selling the chair under the unexciting but perfectly serviceable “standard aluminum side chair” label.
But Emeco has a second claim. It argues that it has a trademark on the chair’s design as well as its name. This claim is also a stretch. The Supreme Court has been very skeptical of such “trade dress” claims in which a firm asserts ownership over how a product looks. The court has said that firms can claim trademark rights on the design of products only if they have achieved what lawyers refer to as “secondary meaning”—that is, if the design is recognized by a substantial number of consumers as synonymous with the product itself. This is possible but very rare. The sinuous design of a Coca-Cola bottle is protected, for example, because people widely recognize a bottle of that shape as synonymous with Coke. Is Emeco’s Navy chair the home furnishing equivalent of a Coke bottle? It may be that a small number of industrial-design fans believe that chairs that look like the Navy chair come from a single source (such as Emeco). But actually they don’t—the Navy chair has been knocked off for years by a number of firms.
Here’s a knockoff version by Advanced Interior Designs. Here’s another by Interiortrade. And here are knockoff Navy chairs in various colors by Globe West. Matt Blatt has done Navy chair knockoffs as well. Heck, at one point, even mega-retailer Target was doing a knockoff. For the same reason that the Navy chair name is probably generic (a lot of firms have produced very similar chairs under that name), the design almost certainly doesn’t indicate any single source of the product (because consumers have been getting their Navy chairs from a variety of sources for years). The bottom line is that Emeco can’t stop Restoration Hardware from knocking off the Navy chair. Now, your first instinct may be to condemn Restoration Hardware as a copycat. You may worry that if Restoration Hardware can get away with copying Emeco’s original design, that’s bound to discourage others from coming up with new furniture designs in the future. But that first instinct can mislead.
In our book, The Knockoff Economy, we look at industries like fashion, cuisine, financial innovations, fonts, databases, and open-source software in which there are lots of copying and knockoffs (often perfectly legal) but also lots of creativity. In all these industries, copying and creativity coexist. In fact, copying often leads to more creativity, not less. Consider the fashion industry. Anyone who has spent time in a Forever 21 store knows that fashion is full of knockoffs. And all this copying is completely legal because copyright law doesn't cover apparel design. Yet far from killing creativity and destroying the market, the industry is prospering. How is that possible? Because of something we all know instinctively about fashion. People typically buy new clothes not because they need them, but because they want to keep up with the latest style. Without copyright restrictions, fashion designers are free to rework a design and jump on board what they hope will be a money-making style.
The result is the industry’s most sacred concept: the trend. Copying creates trends, and trends are what sell fashion. Every season we see designers “take inspiration” from others. Trends catch on, become overexposed, and die. Then new designs take their place. This cycle is familiar. But what is rarely recognized is that the cycle is accelerated by the freedom to copy. So copying is a central, and beneficial, element of the fashion cycle. But that’s not the only way in which copying sparks creativity. Copying can also serve as advertising. When a popular fashion design is imitated, more people see it and experience it, which helps to create buzz and allure. Copies can also serve as trial versions of the original. A 2009 Harvard Business School study found that many women who buy knockoff handbags soon move up to the real thing. Copies act as a kind of gateway drug to the more expensive genuine article. Which brings us back to the Navy chair. What are the effects of cheaper knockoffs on Emeco’s $455 original?