KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 29 -- Wooden armchairs from the 50s, flour sacks repurposed as throw cushions, tables that are older than you and me. These are some of the treasures The Great Indoors finds, restores and rents out to most of the cafés and retail establishments you are familiar with.Founded by former colleagues Kevin Lunsong, 37 and Juwita Jalil, 28, The Great Indoors collects and curates antiques locally and internationally before recycling them for rental or sale.
Mukha, a café in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, was their first customer. Since 2011, their clientele has expanded to retailers and even the construction industry.
“It all started when I found out that Kevin loves antiques. I brought him over to my place to see the collection my family has. We both share a passion for vintage items and he has so many in his collection that his mother was nagging him about the antiques that were occupying all the space in his house!” said Juwita Jalil who is based in Malaysia at the moment.
Lunsong is currently in Shanghai and the duo manages The Great Indoors while maintaining their day jobs.
“We would fly all over the world and hand carry items back to Malaysia. It’s a pretty expensive hobby,” said Juwita.
Some of the items they’ve collected are priceless as they cannot be found elsewhere. That is why only some of the items are for sale while most are for rent. Customers can rent from one day to a year and they have the liberty to rotate the items to change the looks of their restaurants and retail outlets.
“Most new businesses like to keep things looking fresh and new so we provide that service for them,” said Juwita.
The Great Indoors works with a select group of craftsmen, architects, interior designers and builders to provide the look the customer wants.
“It’s a good thing for now,” said Juwita about the retro look trend. But she admits that it is a dying trend and that everything has a lifespan.
“In a year or two, the industry will change to a sleeker, modern look,” she said. For the past three years, The Great Indoors has been designing and furnishing a lot of restaurants and cafés in the Klang
Valley and Juwita says that they are now focusing on other things.
“We want to implement different looks and our final project will be a café but it’s unique. Even with the building structure, it is geometrical so we’ll work around that concept,” said Juwita.
According to her, designing the retro look has been fun but after a while every café had the same tables and chairs. Also, The Great Indoors tries to advise their clients on their colour choices. It seems like Malaysian retailers love the colours black, white and red for décor.
Soon after The Great Indoors was established, other players appeared on the scene but Juwita finds it all part of healthy competition.
“Our end goal is just to be suppliers, not to be opening cafés,” she said.
The Great Indoors offers packages that accommodate their customers’ needs, quoting reasonable pricing with supervision of the renovation and furnishing. Although Juwita works full-time in business development for an advertising agency, she’s on-site every day whenever there is a The Great Indoors-related job.
Currently, the company is mixing and matching retro items with a modern look, giving it a fresh new spin from the dated, almost identical look that is found at most cafés and retailers.
So why antiques?
“I feel that older trees have better quality. Also, antiques last longer. Funnily, expats appreciate vintage items more than the locals do,” Juwita pointed out.
The Great Indoors’ philosophy is to source locally for Malaysian products. Lunsong and Juwita tend to look for things with 1957 or the word Malaya on the items. For recycled crates, they would choose those that are bilingual.
On average, it costs RM60,000 to RM100,000 to hire The Great Indoors. This includes floor plan, 3D rendering, consultation, design, renovation, furnishing and more.
Juwita believes in having the proper SOP (standard operating procedure) when it comes to designing a place.
“A lot of restaurants are going for the cement look but most of them do not know that certain types of cements are not allowed,” said Juwita. Depending on the restaurant, the slick cement might be slippery and dangerous.
When asked about what she thought of the design trends in Malaysia compared to Singapore and Thailand, Juwita feels that Singapore is a lot better in terms of product design. Lunsong himself is a lover of product design while for Juwita, she enjoys touching tables and bar tops because to her, material is very important.
Having a background in engineering and design, Lunsong is into carpentry and he enjoys doing restoration work.
His favourite antique piece is a petrol pump that he leaves in his work space in Kuala Lumpur while Juwita loves the study table she inherited from her late grandfather.
What’s the next trend for interior design?
“The Scandinavian look,” said Juwita as she showed us a vintage couch with pencil legs and a more modern design.
Check out The Great Indoors at http://www.thegreatindoors.my
This story was first published in Crave in the print edition of The Malay Mail on November 28, 2013.
