Member Article

New direction for commercial furniture specialist

A Preston entrepreneur who founded commercial furniture specialist MSL Interiors has announced the launch of a new E-commerce website, Urban Icon.

Built in conjunction with Preston-based Bespoke | Web Specialists, the website will be aimed at the designer urban chic domestic furniture market.

Urban Icon is the brainchild of business partners Mike Laking and Jonathan Spence, who originally launched MSL Interiors in 2005, bringing a refreshing portfolio to the commercial furniture world, with notable hallmarks of design and quality.

The E-commerce site will similarly showcase a range of high quality contemporary furniture suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.

In addition to representing established and respected manufacturers like Artifort, Gallotti & Radici, Tacchini and Pedrali, Urban Icon will champion young designers from across the European spectrum with exciting new aspirational but affordable products.

“Many of our manufacturers, with whom we have established relationships, have additional ranges of products which are targeted at the domestic environment,” said Mike.

“We had felt for some time that we should bring these to market and Urban Icon is the vehicle to do just that.

“Trading conditions in our business sector have been challenging for a number of years, but in the last 12 months we have seen heightened activity in the commercial property sector, which has resulted in a considerable and consistent uplift in market activity for us.

“This combined with a positive outlook across the whole economy, has given us the confidence to develop and launch Urban Icon now.

“We are really very excited to be working with Bespoke and very much looking forward to the launch in a few weeks’ time.”

Gary Bennion, head of digital at Bespoke, added: “Mike and Jonathan are very clear on what they want and it’s been a pleasure to work with them on this new venture.

“The site is bursting with lots of exciting products and we’re expecting it to perform well once it is launched.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .