Fresh ideas

“Young, international and a woman to boot.” Those were the attributes that Nathalie Felber brought to the company when she took the business over from her father in 2011 – initially with her sister, now alone. “I don’t know which of those three characteristics was the decisive factor, but the company culture has changed quite a lot since I joined the firm. We were a bit set in our ways. Everybody focused on their own thing without necessarily considering the bigger picture. I thought it was time to change that and introduced an open communication culture that means everybody pulls together for the good of the company. Our staff’s ideas and suggestions are just as important as feedback from our customers. But it’s essential to keep communication paths short. There’s nothing I hate more than endless minutes and long emails that nobody even reads, let alone acts on. We’ve always got furthest by talking to one another, face to face,” says Nathalie Felber.

You sense this fresh approach to dealing with one another in the products too. Even though some of them, such as the Felber C 14 chair, have been retrieved from the drawers of the company’s archives, they fit in with the current zeitgeist. Nathalie Felber: “It’s important that we draw on our history, which is very closely linked with design, while nevertheless ushering in a new era.” AS

DIETIKER: The firm was founded in 1873 and is the oldest chair manufacturer in Switzerland. The launch of the Willy Guhl chair in the late 1950s revolutionised the furniture industry, while the Rey model (1971) was the first chair that joined wood to metal without using screws. Dietiker develops and produces technically sophisticated products for a wide range of solutions.

Photos: Dietiker (2), René Ruis (1)


Dietiker AG
Hofwisenstrasse 2
CH-8260 Stein am Rhein
Telefon 0041 (0)52 742 21 21
Fax 0041 (0)52 742 21 90
mail@dietiker.com