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DMTV Milkshake: Reform on Creating the Heart of the Home (With Cabinets)

06.16.21 | By
DMTV Milkshake: Reform on Creating the Heart of the Home (With Cabinets)

This week’s DMTV Milkshake guests are Jeppe Christensen and Michael Andersen – CEO and CSO, respectively, of the Copenhagen-based kitchen lifestyle brand Reform. Reform works with architects and designers to offer sleek, modern kitchens – as well as its original cabinetry system, which combines cost-conscious IKEA foundations and Reform’s cabinet fronts.

For this week’s Milkshake, we talked to the co-founders about how they’re able to bridge the physical and philosophical differences between U.S. and European kitchens: “American kitchens are usually bigger – we can see it basically in the basket size,” Andersen says. “Americans might like appliances more. I love American appliances – we don’t have those in Europe, where you get ovens the size of a car and big, big refrigerators. That’s a big difference from the European market – we’re hiding the appliances with built-in dishwashers, et cetera. But there’s also many similarities – people like cool kitchens and good quality.”

Also in this Milkshake: We hear how Reform plans to grow in the years to come, the biggest business challenges coming out of the pandemic (spoiler: raw materials costs are involved), and the controversies around economy, plywood and chipboard in kitchen construction, which you will definitely want to listen to if you’re currently considering going all-out on a plywood-based kitchen. “I think there is a perception that a kitchen built out of a plywood – compared to chipboard or fiberboard – is a much better kitchen, which I actually don’t agree with,” Christensen says. “I think you get some of the best kitchens working with fiberboard and chipboard. It’s a cheaper material, but it’s a more steady material, which is good for a kitchen. That’s a misunderstanding that we sometimes see in the U.S. – in Europe, some of the most high-end, expensive kitchen brands you can find in the world are literally building their kitchens on fiberboard and on chipboard.”

Tune in to meet the guys – and hear if Kanye West will soon join Jean Nouvel and many others on their roster of design partners.

Diana Ostrom, who has written for Wallpaper, Interior Design, ID, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets, is also the author of Faraway Places, a newsletter about travel.

Milkshake, DMTV (Design Milk TV)’s first regular series, shakes up the traditional interview format by asking designers, creatives, educators and industry professionals to select interview questions at random from their favorite bowl or vessel. During their candid discussions, you’ll not only gain a peek into their personal homeware collections, but also valuable insights into their work, life and passions.