A beautiful walnut console sits at the entrance to the showroom of the Quebec company Transformer Table, located in Pointe-Claire. The seemingly simple piece of furniture hides a secret. It’s actually the same model as the huge table that can accommodate up to 12 people right next to it.
“It’s a very versatile table,” confirms Saskia Rose Perron-Jansen, communications manager for the company.
With its five panels that can be added or removed, the size of the first product invented by Transformer Table in 2016 easily adapts to different occasions, from romantic tête-à-tête to family holiday celebrations.
The same goes for the bench, also made of hardwood. In less than a minute, Saskia Rose Perron-Jansen transforms the long seat that can accommodate at least six people into a much narrower seat, all by making the different panels disappear into a compartment under the furniture.
“It’s really easy to do it on your own,” she says, doing so.
If the bench has its own hiding place to store the boards used for its extension, the table has its own piece of furniture in which to hide them.
“Since there is no place to put the panels like with the bench, we brought out the coffee table in 2018,” says Saskia Rose Perron-Jansen, showing an example. With its lifting board, the coffee table can not only be used to store panels – or different objects – but it offers the possibility of sitting in the living room to work.
The Montreal company specializes in modular furniture, designed to have more than one use. Their other products include sofas with hidden storage, extendable patio sets and, since this fall, a table that transforms into a desk, born from a collaboration with Stella Artois. Like a desk, its top lifts to make room for a space where you can place your computer and hang two monitors.
Transformer Table’s best seller, however, remains the dining room table, reveals Saskia Rose Perron-Jansen.
If the product is of increasing interest to families and seniors who like to entertain, it was first designed for people who live in condos, indicates the company representative. New York and Los Angeles, where many people live in small spaces, are the two cities where Transformer Table has the most sales.
“This type of furniture is much more suitable for small apartments which cannot have everything at the same time,” observes Maxime Partouche, interior designer and practical training manager at the University of Montreal. The idea, for example, that the table subsequently transforms into an office will allow people to meet their needs in a more restricted space. »
Practicality is also one of the three criteria that guide the Cozey team in the design of their furniture, which, according to their leitmotif, must also be “affordable and elegant”. “More and more, people are looking for added value in the products they buy,” notes founding president Frédéric Aubé.
The Montreal company, which stood out by being the first in Canada to offer “couches in a box”, has since diversified its range.
In 2021, it notably launched a coffee table which, with its lifting tops, allows you to work or eat while sitting on your couch (like that of Transformer Table). The particularity of the model proposed by Cozey is its modular aspect which offers the possibility of orienting the trays in the desired direction. The idea appealed to consumers, since they quickly adopted it, indicates Frédéric Aubé. “The Stella table has definitely been a success since its launch. »
This type of furniture, which fulfills more than one function and which can be modulated according to desires and needs, “has a future”, believes interior designer Maxime Partouche. For what ? Because homes are changing, especially in the greater Montreal area. “Real estate builders are producing apartments that are smaller and smaller. […] I am convinced that this type of furniture will tend to find its place in the future,” he maintains.
