For Australian designers, the name Paul Rogers may be less familiar. Yet the Belgium-based designer and manufacturer of luxury lounge suites and occasional furniture has been gracing the homes of Europe since the 1960s – although not always in the form it takes now. As part of our Tallira Talks series, we talked with Louis Rogers, Sales Director for Paul Rogers and the third generation of this family-owned business, to discover the story behind the brand and what they’re doing differently.
While ‘Made in Europe’ carries a certain level of appeal and cachet in the Australian interior design industry, it’s just one of the reasons Tallira co-founder Simon Robinson chose to introduce Paul Rogers to the Australian market. The relationship began when Simon met the Paul Rogers team at a furniture fair in China, where both companies were exhibiting – Tallira showcasing its rugs and Paul Rogers its furniture.
Tallira initially began purchasing some of their locally made Chinese furniture, and as the relationship developed, this eventually evolved into working with their luxury European furniture collections.
For Simon, however, it’s not simply about where the furniture is made. What matters as much, if not more, is the craftsmanship, genuine care and family values of the company; qualities that align so closely with Tallira’s own philosophy.
The Paul Rogers story begins in Belgium in 1960, when Paul and Paula Rogiers, the grandparents of Louis and his brother Thibault, who heads product development and production, established a wholesale business importing decorative objects from Italy and Greece, and later India and Thailand.
Bringing in hard-to-find pieces from faraway destinations to discerning clients across Europe proved to be a successful model, but as the decades passed and the world became more global, the second generation saw an opportunity to make its own mark on the family business. Louis and Thibault’s father realised that to remain successful the business needed to evolve from being an importer to a manufacturer.
Paul and Paula Rogiers
Louis and his brother Thibault
In 2000, he purchased land in Romania, a nation known for its furniture manufacturing capabilities. “My father realised that the business needed to evolve. With importing and wholesale, you have little control over the quality and the design,” recalls Louis. “He became increasingly frustrated by this so he bought some land in Romania, where many of the leading manufacturers have their operations. While he didn’t know anything about manufacturing, he was determined.”
Compared to the year 2000, when there was just one private label client and fifteen people in the upholstery team, the business looks very different today. Like their father before them, Louis and Thibault brought the perspective of a new generation to the family business, using the manufacturing knowledge they had inherited to evolve the company once again.
“In 2019, my brother and I said, okay, the years ahead will be more and more difficult for a European manufacturing company to compete with Asian manufacturing companies,” says Louis. “We were already feeling this before Covid. And so we said okay, we have all the machines, we know the supply chain, we know how to achieve great quality products, why don’t we design and manufacture for ourselves?”
However, Louis and Thibault knew that in order to be successful they would need a point of difference. “Furniture is a lot like the automobile market,” suggests Louis. “You have the Ferrari, the Lamborghini, the Rolls Royce and Bentley. These might be Minotti, Cassina and other well-known Italian brands. Then you have Volkswagen, Skoda, Citroen, which are like the Scandinavian brands. But in furniture, where are the Range Rovers, the Mercedes, the BMW?”
The transition from private label manufacturer to Paul Rogers took five years, with the brand officially launching in March 2024. The brand takes its name from the first generation, with one small change, dropping the ‘i’ from the family name Rogiers to make Rogers easier to pronounce and spell internationally.
While the focus was now firmly on their own designs, the decades spent manufacturing for others had also taught Louis and Thibault that good design alone wasn’t enough. “You can make a lot of nice things, but if it doesn't sell, in the end, your brand also will not grow,” says Louis. Rather than investing in flagship showrooms, they chose to work with a small number of trusted distributors around the world.
Today, there are more than 150 staff, an in-house product development team led by Creative Director Cas Moor, and collaborations with some of the most exciting young product designers in Europe. It is these designers, each given carte blanche, combined with decades of manufacturing knowledge, that elevate what Paul Rogers offers the industry.
After developing and successfully launching the first collection, Louis and Thibault once again trusted their instincts, this time reaching out to established and emerging industrial designers to create individual ranges of contemporary sofas that reflect what Louis refers to as Belgian Contemporary Design. “It’s a perfect balance between South Europe and North Europe. So not contemporary Italian chic and not minimalistic Scandinavian design either. We’re seeking to strike a balance between these two.”
Achieving the Belgian Contemporary Design aesthetic was the only real parameter given to each of the designers. Beyond this, the brief was completely open-ended. To date, the resulting designs exude the balance Louis mentions, translating into almost any setting from Brussels to Brighton.
Designed by Italian designer Stefano Prevosti, the Cobble modular lounge suite draws inspiration from the irregular patterns of historic European cobblestone streets, patterns familiar to anyone living in Melbourne or Sydney’s inner city suburbs. Having studied at Designskolen Kolding in Denmark and been nominated for Copenhagen’s FSC Design Award, Prevosti has an ability to translate abstract ideas or unrelated textures into beautifully articulated pieces of furniture design.
The result brings together an almost literal meeting of southern and northern European design influences. Each individual Cobble piece, finished in high quality upholstery and available in a range of timeless colours, can be rearranged into different configurations to adapt to almost any environment.
Jonas Van Put is one of Belgium’s emerging design talents. The recipient of the Young Talent Gold Award at the Henri van de Velde Awards, Van Put’s Cocoon chair is a real world example of what happens when the freedom of carte blanche design rubs up against the commercial realities of manufacturing.
The original design featured a solid brass ring wrapping around the base. While beautiful, it added thousands of euros to the production costs of the chair. As Louis mentioned, in order for a brand to grow, it’s essential to design pieces that are not just beautiful but also commercially viable. Where some brands may simply value manage out these sorts of details with minimal involvement from the designer, Paul Rogers’ approach is to lean in further. From design and product development through to testing and production, the designer and R&D team travel regularly to the factory in Romania, spending days on the floor with the factory team adjusting and refining the design collectively.
This high touch, hands-on, iterative approach ensures the final result remains the truest expression of the original design while retaining its quality and design integrity.
Comodo Sofa
It’s one thing to work with award-winning designers. It’s another to translate a concept, or even a prototype, into a fully commercialised product range. It’s completely another to translate a concept, or even a prototype, into a fully commercialised product range. Again, this is where the family legacy of Paul Rogers comes into its own. While the brand may be relatively new in name, collectively, the team possesses decades of woodworking and upholstery craftsmanship knowledge and expertise.
Harnessing all of this experience and using it to their advantage is perhaps the secret ingredient. “As of today, with Paul Rogers, you’re playing Champions League level,” Louis recalls of the message he gave to the Romanian team when they shifted from private label production to producing under their own name two years ago. “Every piece that is in your hands is like a final in the World Cup. It needs to be perfect.”
This level of care and commitment to both design intent and manufacturing perfection, combined with decades of experience producing pieces for others, is what sets Paul Rogers apart.
For Louis and Thibault, it’s not about doing anything for the sake of it. It’s about longevity. It’s about putting pieces into the world that will themselves become the physical sites where memories are made and families come together. “If you have an iconic piece, you don’t throw it away in five or ten years,” says Louis. “You keep it within the family.”
Not just today, but for years to come. Which is precisely what is meant by Connecting Generations. It’s about three generations of the Rogiers family, of course, but also the potential for a thoughtfully designed, well-made piece of furniture to live across generations.
Which brings us back to Australia. For Simon, introducing Paul Rogers to the local market through Tallira wasn’t simply about furniture for furniture’s sake. It was about working with another independently owned, family run business that had arrived at a familiar idea: that thoughtful design, quality materials and genuine craftsmanship can and should have a place between the everyday and the aspirational.
There are parallels between the two businesses. Like Paul Rogers, Tallira has grown through long term relationships with the people who make its products and a genuine respect for their knowledge and craftsmanship. Both are family-owned businesses that have evolved considerably from where they began, while continuing to place the same value on exceptional quality, design and how things are made.
Perhaps that’s where the idea of Connecting Generations resonates most. Because, whether it’s a rug, a sofa or a chair, the pieces worth investing in are the ones you want to live with. And, as Louis says, maybe even keep within the family.
