Luca Nichetto has been involved in Zaozuo from the outset, as designer and art director. “Shu Wei contacted me by email to tell me about her idea of building a furniture company from scratch for the Chinese middle class, with products of good quality and good design, to be marketed and sold online. I was interested, because I have never worked for this target – Made in Italy has shifted towards the high end of the market – and the project took me back to the roots of Italian design, to the period after World War II when design began to enter the lives of people. As creative director of Zaozuo, until last January, I ranged from the collections to the stores; from only online sales we shifted to retail, in fact, opening 15 monobrand stores in three years in the main Chinese cities. Today, with an in-house team of 30 designers whose efforts range from styling to production design, the company can move forward on its own. Though it is still a start-up, Zaozuo has sales of 50 million dollars.”
Nichetto called in international designers with different languages, like Claesson Koivisto Rune, Form Us With Love, Max Gerthel, Constance Guisset, Richard Hutten, Philippe Malouin, Nendo and Jonas Wagell. Later Chinese designers also entered the ranks, like Mario Tsai. “I chose a group of international designers to give the brand local appeal – the Chinese market keeps its eyes peeled on the West – and to stimulate the young talents who would be working inside the company. With their different approaches and geographical backgrounds, the chosen designers illustrated a modus operandi different from the one the in-house designers were used to applying. It is hard to initiate collaborations with Chinese freelance professionals, because most of them are trained inside companies, just like what is happening at Zaozuo.