ideaco & associates started in 1989 as a product design and planning company. The“Cube”, an umbrella stand, was the first product of our own ideaco brand. More than 400,000 Cubes were sold in Japan in 7 years. It became the standard of its kind and still is.
We are currently developing our own items as well as OEM items in collaboration with both domestic and overseas designers.
2003: Our umbrella holder “OKURA”won the highest award in the Good Design Award section from the Osaka Design Center. (Home Living Environmental Design Category)
2004: Our magazine holder “KAMUI”received a Good Design Award from the Japanese Industrial Design Promotion Organization.
2005: Our multi hanger “ARROW”won a Good Design Award from the Japanese Industrial Design Promotion Organization.
2008: Our trash can “TUBLER”won the prestigious iF Product Design Award 2008.
We believe that “nowaste” is beautiful. We wish to be as close to nature as possible, because that's where no waste exists and all constituents need each other and live together in harmony. In the designer terminology, this concept is known as minimalism.
A life style of the future with minimal waste is what we strive for. Disregard fads, and create simple but functional, innovative but timeless products for everyday life. That is our credo.
Our unit consists of 5 designers, Shigeyuki Inui, Kazuya Koike, Takayuki Shimizu, Yoko Hiraguchi and Ikumi Nakamura. Ichiro Haba, the company president, oversees all product designs.
Our designs are created by all designers working together. The designer who came up with an initial idea becomes the leader for its development, and embarks on the process of design refinement with inputs from everybody else at every step of the way. Mr.Haba guides the group to the final design. Thus, high quality of our design and our products is the result of extensive collaboration and critiquing.
Design Director
Ichiro Haba
Designer
Inui Shigeyuki
Kazuya Koike
Takayuki Shimizu
Yoko Hiraguchi
Ikumi Nakamura
The design label f.a.t started in 2003. Its unique style, delicate but passionate and relaxed, is popular and their products have been represented in a number of exhibitions at home and abroad.
This unit consists of Japanese designers living in Milano, Italy, from 2004.
They consciously try to put together two contrasting tastes or styles, i.e., the powerful and dramatic Italian and the subtle gentleness of traditional Japan.
“Suwaru Style” was born in June, 2004 out of design collaboration between Tokyo Sinco Leather Co.,Ltd., an interior material manufacturer, and ideaco & associates under the guiding concept, “creating new ways of sitting for new floor environments”.
In 2005 and 2006, their products were exhibited at New York's International Gift Fair “Accent on Design”. New York Times published an article in 2005 describing our exhibits in the Fair.
