TAKT Cross Chair, assembled and disassembled. Image: courtesy Montana.

Montana acquires TAKT

Montana Furniture has acquired TAKT. The company will continue as TAKT by Montana, retaining its collection and collaborations with designers including Pearson Lloyd, Sam Hecht, Kim Colin and Thomas Bentzen.

TAKT was founded by Henrik Taudorf Lorensen in 2017 around a compelling proposition: well-designed furniture, sold at accessible prices, made transparently and designed for disassembly, repair and recycling. The products were credible and the argument unusually complete. The company was less successful at turning either into a sustainable business. Its 2025 accounts show a loss of DKK 2.3 million and negative equity of DKK 6.4 million.

Montana gives TAKT the manufacturing, distribution and financial structure it could not build alone. In return, Montana gains a younger brand, a strong collection in solid wood and a developed position on circular production.

TAKT made nice furniture. But there is no shortage of nice furniture. What made the company stand out was its principles: accessible pricing, transparency, and products designed to be taken apart, repaired and recycled. The chairs gave those ideas a physical form. They were not the whole proposition.

That is why Montana’s description of TAKT as adding “a tactile layer” to its collection feels underwhelming. Does Montana see the thinking behind the furniture, or simply a collection of good-looking wooden chairs? If it is the latter, I think it has misunderstood what it bought.

The fact that TAKT struggled commercially does not mean its principles were wrong. Montana has an opportunity to give those principles the industrial backing they lacked. That would be worth celebrating. Keeping the products while letting go of the ideas would preserve the least distinctive part of TAKT.

TAKT by Montana

Kettal’s Eames Pavilion System. Image: courtesy Kettal.

What ORGATEC revealed

ORGATEC has now reported more than 40,000 trade visitors from 121 countries and 550 exhibitors from 39 countries. That is down from 50,061 visitors and 729 exhibitors in 2024.

The fair felt busy, but smaller than some remembered. Several halls and entire floors were closed. “There were plenty of halls that were not even used,” one insider told me.

Chinese companies made up just over 22 per cent of the exhibitor directory, broadly unchanged from 2024, but their presentation has improved dramatically. “There were a lot of tier B and C companies going apples to apples with the real design brands,” said one insider. The European establishment can no longer assume it will also have the better product, stand or sales material.

Kettal was one of the few companies with unmistakable ambition. Its roster already includes Patricia Urquiola, Naoto Fukasawa, Ronan Bouroullec, Jasper Morrison and Konstantin Grcic. Now it is adding Charles and Ray Eames and Verner Panton. There is something slightly Pokémon-like about it. Kettal seems determined to collect them all.

At a fair dominated by following the leader, Kettal stood out by practising the traditional European model more skilfully than almost anyone else. It is not new leadership, but a very effective version of the old one.

ORGATEC 2026 final report · Kettal designers

Petrus

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