FDB Møbler: One of the most ambitious certifications

Since its establishment in 1942, the Danish furniture brand FDB Møbler has had the mission to provide Danes with durable, classically designed, quality furniture. This thinking continued when FDB Møbler started up again in 2013 after the factory had been closed since 1980.

Producing good, durable, quality furniture goes hand-in-hand with environmental sustainability. FDB Møbler has therefore also set the objective to be Denmark’s most responsible furniture company. To achieve this goal, FDB Møbler has decided that by 2025 the majority of its products must be certified with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel.

"This means that the furniture can have a long life – and if, for some reason, you want to get rid of the furniture, the quality is so good that the furniture can be resold and thereby live on at a new location. This is precisely what the Nordic Swan Ecolabel focuses on, as one of the brand's strengths."

Business benefits

FDB Møbler’s work with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel is a strategic decision that requires the company to carefully select the right partners.

"It’s a huge process that we’ve set in motion in order to achieve our goal of having the majority of our products certified with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel by 2025. Finding the right factories and suppliers that can produce and deliver what we want is a major task. But we're working to achieve our ambition," says Ole Kiel and continues:

FDB Møbler is in no doubt that the Nordic Swan Ecolabel ensures a strong responsibility profile and provides a number of advantages.

"We see the Nordic Swan Ecolabel as the market’s most ambitious environmental certification scheme. Certification provides us with a number of advantages because it's easier for us to enter into dialogue with new distributors when we can document that we have Nordic Swan Ecolabel products and that we go a long way to be responsible," says Ole Kiel, adding:

"If our products fulfil the Nordic Swan Ecolabel requirements, there's not much more we can do. We know that the production conditions are in order and that we can document our environmental work, which is why the Nordic Swan Ecolabel is so important for our continuing sustainability work."

Great ambitions with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel

FDB Møbler focuses on spreading awareness of Nordic Swan Ecolabel furniture.

"We put a lot of effort into marketing the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, and we do this because we want to be able to say that we behave responsibly. We can see that an increasing number of public procurersand large companies require ecolabels such as the Nordic Swan Ecolabel," says Ole Kiel.

Even though FDB Furniture is not yet experiencing the same level of demand from end- users, they believe that the new generations will come to appreciate more environmentally friendly products.

"That’s why we're patient and focus on not harming nature. In business terms, we believe that environmental sustainability will be even greater than it already is – and that certifications, for example, will become more important. Here, we see an advantage of the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, because it is the most well-known and most recognized labelling scheme in the Nordic region," says Ole Kiel.

According to Ole Kiel, the strength of the Nordic Swan Ecolabel lies precisely in the fact that the Nordic region is known for being at the forefront of sustainable initiatives.

"That’s why we make a lot of effort to market our Nordic Swan Ecolabel furniture. Because this supports our message that we behave in a proper and responsible manner. We believe that in the long term we will gain a commercial advantage."

The belief that consumers will also increasingly demand Nordic Swan Ecolabel furniture means, among other things, that FDB Møbler focuses on displaying certification signs and training shop employees in what the brand stands for.

Efforts bearing fruit

In 2020, FDB Møbler experienced positive sales growth. At the start of the year, the company expected to grow by 25%, but by the end of the year could look back on a year in which revenue grew by 50%. Our efforts to achieve Nordic Swan Ecolabel certification of all products and to use this actively in our marketing seem to be bearing fruit:

"Sales of furniture certified with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel and FSC increased by 100% in the first five months of the year compared to the equivalent period of the previous year. We look forward to following further developments, that are already promising," Ole Kiel concludes.

October 2022