Black Owl ApS is a family business run by Andrei Reshetin. Andrei transitioned to designing craft furniture after a decade of success in the tech world. Prior to Black Owl, he has founded CactusSoft, an international software development company with 100 software engineers that was acquired by the Belgian LitusSoft in 2017.

When I created the interior of our IT office, and then for the house and apartment for my wife and me, I was only looking for original, unique high-quality furniture. It was not easy. The house appeared to be a tough cookie. My wife Vera wanted a brutal interior with noble black metal furniture. I did my research – and found nothing.

In the end, I had to go with my sketches to the welders who completed our orders in a garage workshop. It was painstaking work; all the details were polished manually. I literally had to explain my ideas in hand-waving terms. As a result, I was satisfied with the design but not with the quality of the finished furniture. I realized that I had to start my own production. A single self-educated welder simply cannot make a good product, but a factory team can. So Black Owl appeared.

I am responsible for the design and managing the manufacture. Our staff helps with the technical process. We have a very good product engineer at Black Owl. She is not just interested in what she does; she truly lives for that.

We spend almost all the time indoors, especially here in Denmark, and our interior is a reflection of our inner world. If each of us is unique, then why repeat the others? I am sure that only original items, even if they come from a new brand, will help to create an authentic designer interior.

I always had a thing for this heavy, brutalist sort of design language despite the fact that our furniture is made of metal, I wanted to make classic light craft items that would fit into any interior. It could be a house, an apartment, an office, a cafe or a restaurant. Industrial design is too bulky and heavy to my mind, but we certainly took something out of it. The loft is overly replicated, it is everywhere, so I wanted to get away from it. However, black metal loft furniture is very organic. Therefore, we have a symbiosis of different styles with a focus on classics.

The main difference between our furniture and furniture from other manufacturers is that our construction can be taken to pieces completely. It’s that simple: just undo the screws, put everything in a box, pack it, and transport it from one address to another. Almost no one in the entire industry can do this, because it is really difficult. It is necessary to polish literally every inch of construction, and this is five times, or even ten times more complicated. Therefore, we bought professional equipment – special tables with all the necessary fixing devices, because each millimeter is important here. If the master makes even just one mistake, the table or the cabinet will be difficult to assemble. The principle of Black Owl is that we make good furniture that is as easy to assemble as IKEA furniture, so that even a housewife can handle it.

I like the village very much. I love simple forms and authenticity, I even have an Instagram account devoted to a village. I take pictures of old colorful houses, which disappear every year, and home furnishings. If you look closely, there are a lot of neat details in the village that are close to modern design.

I like to notice the details. I can walk down the street and suddenly stop, viewing an unusual door in Copenhagen for a long time. Or I will get "stuck" near the bridge for half an hour: I really like to photograph them.

We are very proud and thankful to MUSE Awards team for choosing our product.

We’ve chosen our Greenwich Table to enter into 2019 MUSE Awards. It is inspired by the famous Burj Khalifa building, the tallest structure in the world, allowing this impressive oversized table exude multiculturalism and globalization. The table is destined to become the centrepiece of the home or office, whether it’s the dining room or the board room.

The Greenwich table features steel table legs that echo the shape of stalactites. The master welder employed a complicated process of thin layering, similar to jewelry art, to create the look.

Awards are important on many different levels. For Black Owl team they are a recognition of the time and passion that has been invested in a project.

It seems to me that doing business, especially in creative industry, is like going on a sea trip. You cannot give up and go down. You need to swim, flounder as hard as you can, but continue swimming. Finally, you will see the shore.

It is very important for the designer to observe, to notice the details, everything related to the interior and its finishing. The visual experience is accumulated and can be transformed into anything.

The Arizona Vintage Industrial factory is the trendsetter for the industrial style. Instead of following the trend of fashion, like most other manufacturers, Vintage Industrial sets the trends itself. Many objects look out of date and can even be mistaken for antiques. At the factory, every detail of the furniture is intentionally aged, so that it looks at least a hundred years old.

Black Owl was inspired by this American story, but we decided to make our steel furniture completely different: light and more classic. The brutal loft is a great style, but not to everyone’s taste, and we wanted Black Owl products to look good in any interior.

We have chosen the premium segment, and are prepared for constant quality control. You may start to think about reducing the costs of some production stages. Well, expenses can be cut down in many ways: just downgrade the quality of an ordinary screw or a tiny crack filling. Come what may, it will definitely reduce the costs and nobody will notice anything. But you need to overcome these thoughts and make everything right. You will have to sacrifice profits, you will scrub away every speck of dust, but in the end, your product will become truly top-grade.