Boaz Cohen is realistic. “Being an independent designer can be a tough job and it takes a long time between having your work recognised and starting to earn a proper living,” he says.
But that still didn’t stop the young designer and his partner, Sayaka Yamamoto, from launching their own company, BCXSY (their combined initials), in 2006, immediately after their graduation from Design Academy Eindhoven. Initially, the collaboration was a spontaneous experiment “but the harmony and pleasure of working together, combined with many positive reactions” encouraged them to make it more formal.
There is no distinction between work and home life. “Being a couple means we don’t need to limit ourselves to a nine-to-five working day; we are lucky enough to be able to introduce any idea as soon as it’s conceived in our minds, share it and decide whether we can take it further,” says Cohen. And both agree success won’t come without such commitment.
“Be prepared to live modestly, skip holidays and have long working days and weeks” is Cohen’s advice for young start-ups. “It’s important to appreciate the good things and be patient. Most of the best things we have experienced came as a surprise.”
One important moment was meeting Rossanna Orlandi, whose concept store in Milan hosts an annual showcase of bright young designers. Cohen not only visited the gallery with Yamamoto last December but also managed to secure an appointment with the proprietor. And “it was immediately clear that this beautiful space was the perfect place to exhibit our upcoming collection during the [2009] Salone [Internazionale] del Mobile in April”.
Under a banner proclaiming “Welcome to the Stone Age”, BCXSY showed Change! – furniture, vases, lights and even a very un-cuddly teddy bear, all of which appeared to be heavy and cumbersome, made of stone or cement, but that were in fact fabricated from soft, flexible and very light rubber-coated foam. Cohen’s parents are both musicians and he was brought up in Tzur Moshe, a small village in the centre of Israel. As a child he enjoyed telling stories, drawing and building things to illustrate this fantasy world, and studying wild life and ancient societies. Following mandatory military service in Israel, he spent 11 months travelling through Asia, visiting Thailand, Laos, India and Nepal before settling in the Netherlands. (His grandfather had served in the Dutch Brigade during the second world war, which entitled him to a Dutch passport).
He studied the language in Utrecht, then moved to Eindhoven, where he tried several courses before ending up in the Man & Identity department, focused on fashion trends, forecasting and the relationship between interiors and products and at the time led by former academy director Li Edlelkoort.
“I needed something to shake me up because after the first term I didn’t pass the evaluation and was even asked what I was doing at the school,” Cohen recalls. But the new line of study “widened my view of the world and I became more open and interested in different fields and started to work harder to achieve what I really wanted”, he says. “I finally knew I was on the right track and regained my faith.”
The influence of college projects can be seen in BCXSY’s current work. A favourite is a collaboration with Swarovski looking at aspects of crystals, especially their tactility, and how to express this in new ways by creating different applications for people who can’t see them.
There have been starts and stops. When Swing Lamp, a basic swing with an illuminated seat, from Cohen and Yamamoto’s Play! collection made the cover of The New York Times Style Magazine last year it seemed like a great opportunity. But unfortunately they had only managed to produce a prototype, naively hoping that a manufacturer would miraculously appear, invest and quickly bring the product to market. Instead, “it turned out to be a long and painful road”, Cohen says. “After a short time we found one small company [that] shared our passion [but] after almost a year of constant miscommunication we decided to stop the process and look for another partner. We recently collaborated with an Italian company known in the field of rotation-moulding, a technique required for producing the Swing Lamp, and soon it will be available.”
The highs are starting to outweigh the lows. One retailer doubled its order for a piece because the initial group sold out before it was even in the store. And there has been lots of positive feedback from customers about the quality and desirability of BCXSY’s work. “As obvious as this might be, this is one of the nicest moments in the design process,” Cohen says. “I don’t have regrets for the past. Everything that has happened, whether positive or negative, has brought me where I am today and I am very happy where I am.”
