Simple Analysis on the Cause of the Development of Furniture Designer’s Brand Industry -- Take MORELESS and OPAL for Example

This article analyzes the characteristics of different types of furniture brands based on ordinary brands and designer brands. We also investigates and studies the causes of the development and growth of designer brands, and further combines the successful cases of domestic excellent furniture designer brands to summarize the specific reasons for the formation of the brand of furniture designers, design principles and methods. This paper discusses the development direction, design principles and methods of furniture designer brand, and provides references for the comprehensive exploration of furniture designer's brand development. 1 Definition of Brand Type In the division of furniture brand, it can be divided into minority brand and popular brand according to the different leading way of product design. In simple terms, the minority brand also called the designer brand, which is dominated by the design style of the designer; and the popular brand is dominated by the market demand. One is the design of subjective consciousness, and the other is the design of the objective requirement, so there are obvious differences between the both in the consumer. The designer brand is guided by the consumer diversification and individualized demand, with the designer's personal design concept as the guidance. The founder of the designer brand furniture is the design director, who controls the design of furniture products, and has independent proposition and attitude of design, and distinctive design language. The designer brand has a deep study on the furniture trend and the ideal life style, and the designer is the strategic core of brand. The popular brand is guided by the consumer market, Keep abreast of consumer preferences and fashion trends, and designs products that meet market demand. The popular brand is usually an enterprise that owns such hardware as manufacturing technology and equipment, and has such software as planning, advertising and marketing capabilities. Therefore, the popular brand has mature and perfect product service system, lower production cost and price advantage. However, compared with the designer brand, its design performance and design level are not enough, and the homogeneity is serious. 2 Case of Designer Brand 2.1 Social Transformation and Development China is changing from the electrified industrial age to the automated Internet era. The situation of serious information asymmetry in the industrial age has been improved in the Internet age. In the industrial age, manufacturers can not integrate information and they only combine all the needs. From a design point of view, they are design for design, innovation for innovation. In the era of Internet, the market economic system is transformed from producer oriented to consumer oriented. The value of commodities depends more on the psychological needs of consumers, and the product from functional satisfaction to psychological satisfaction. From the perspective of Internet communication, designer brand furniture which does not possess the financial strength of a popular brand cannot be publicized by TV, newspapers or magazines which needs high cost of advertising. Through the dissemination of the Internet, we can use the brand's official website, WeChat Subscription, Microblog, Douban and Renren which are known to the mainstream media to expand the influence. It can be said that the spread of the Internet has promoted the development of designer brand. In addition, E-commerce has promoted the development of logistics. The transition from traditional logistics to modern logistics and the formation of information as the core, to strengthen the integration of resources and logistics process optimization, increasingly mature and perfect large logistics companies with the lowest cost of logistics will be this kind of large furniture products delivered to consumers. This is also another reason for the development of the designer brand furniture industry. MATEC Web of Conferences 176, 02001 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201817602001


Definition of Brand Type
In the division of furniture brand, it can be divided into minority brand and popular brand according to the different leading way of product design. In simple terms, the minority brand also called the designer brand, which is dominated by the design style of the designer; and the popular brand is dominated by the market demand. One is the design of subjective consciousness, and the other is the design of the objective requirement, so there are obvious differences between the both in the consumer. The designer brand is guided by the consumer diversification and individualized demand, with the designer's personal design concept as the guidance. The founder of the designer brand furniture is the design director, who controls the design of furniture products, and has independent proposition and attitude of design, and distinctive design language. The designer brand has a deep study on the furniture trend and the ideal life style, and the designer is the strategic core of brand. The popular brand is guided by the consumer market, Keep abreast of consumer preferences and fashion trends, and designs products that meet market demand. The popular brand is usually an enterprise that owns such hardware as manufacturing technology and equipment, and has such software as planning, advertising and marketing capabilities. Therefore, the popular brand has mature and perfect product service system, lower production cost and price advantage. However, compared with the designer brand, its design performance and design level are not enough, and the homogeneity is serious.

Social Transformation and Development
China is changing from the electrified industrial age to the automated Internet era. The situation of serious information asymmetry in the industrial age has been improved in the Internet age. In the industrial age, manufacturers can not integrate information and they only combine all the needs. From a design point of view, they are design for design, innovation for innovation. In the era of Internet, the market economic system is transformed from producer oriented to consumer oriented. The value of commodities depends more on the psychological needs of consumers, and the product from functional satisfaction to psychological satisfaction.
From the perspective of Internet communication, designer brand furniture which does not possess the financial strength of a popular brand cannot be publicized by TV, newspapers or magazines which needs high cost of advertising. Through the dissemination of the Internet, we can use the brand's official website, WeChat Subscription, Microblog, Douban and Renren which are known to the mainstream media to expand the influence. It can be said that the spread of the Internet has promoted the development of designer brand.
In addition, E-commerce has promoted the development of logistics. The transition from traditional logistics to modern logistics and the formation of information as the core, to strengthen the integration of resources and logistics process optimization, increasingly mature and perfect large logistics companies with the lowest cost of logistics will be this kind of large furniture products delivered to consumers. This is also another reason for the development of the designer brand furniture industry.

The Development of Social Economy and the Change of Social Demand
American psychologist Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory points out that human needs are divided into five categories, which are physiological needs, security needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. Five kinds of needs are gradually increasing at the level. Its incentive function will be reduced after the low level needs to be satisfied, and the high level needs will replace the low level need to become the new goal, which will push people towards a higher level. With the development of China's economy after the reform and opening up, some people are getting rich already, and the number is increasing by years. Those who have reached the stage of well-off society are developing to the prosperous stage or have reached the level of prosperity. Popular brand furniture can no longer satisfy the aesthetic needs of such middle and upper class in social strata. In pursuit of actualization needs of higher value, designer brand furniture arises at the historic moment. In addition, with the development of the times, young people seeking personality began to accept the purchase of such brand products.
As the Japanese designer Masayuki Kurokawa's point "Only by starting from a special self can the design truly resonate with others [1] ". Designers understand consumers' needs and combine their own design characteristics to create better product experience for consumers. Therefore, the differences of consumers' psychological needs make product development more diversified and personalized.

Progress in Production Technology
The modern society has close the distance between the designers and the customers, at the same time, it has brought the designer closer to the factory. Designer brands choose to send orders to enterprises with excellent quality and low production cost through the way of OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing). The processing strength of the factory is combined with the design strength of the designer brand to make the products of the small amount and customized products to avoid waste of resources caused by overcapacity. The designer brand has a good design resource integration ability, which conforms to the development direction of the times.

The Development of Urbanization
As the progress of the urbanization process, "The Growth Forecast Report of China ' s Urbanization Rate in 2016-2020 " shows the permanent population of China's urbanization will reach 810 million in 2018, and the urbanization rate of China will reach 63.4% in 2020. This means that the rural population is flooding into cities, buying houses to change their living conditions and Furnish new furniture. Therefore, the market demand for furniture is also increasing, the development prospect of furniture industry is good.

Innovation-driven
Premier Li Keqiang put forward the slogan of "mass entrepreneurship and multitude innovation", and built a new engine for China's economy. Local governments responded to the call and issued various supporting policies for innovation and entrepreneurship, from funding support to the construction of entrepreneurial parks. All these policies are conducive to the development of furniture designer brand. Analysis from the point of view that innovation is the foundation of a nation ， the policy support of our country, more professional design background and the higher educational background of designer make the designer brand can be more create a design powerful nation.

The Change of the Consciousness of Consumption and the Improvement of the Design Level of the Designer
With the improvement of consumers' awareness of health and environmental protection, Economically powerful consumers are more health-conscious and more willing to buy environmentally friendly products. Designer brand furniture has small capacity and short chain of funds, so it is more cautious in design. Designer brand furniture is a "D2C" development model, that means designer to consumer. Designer brands know more about customers who buy their own brands, so the unmarketable rate of the product is lower and the impact on the environment is smaller. According to the survey, most of the designer brand furniture is solid wood furniture, the structure of furniture is mostly connected with tenon joints, the use of adhesives is less, and the wood surface is made of natural wood wax oil. So the furniture almost does not contain three benzene and formaldehyde, which is more safe and healthier to use.As mentioned above, consumer demand has begun to change to the needs of self-realization, and consumers pay more attention to spiritual needs. Therefore, furniture designers are very important in the design, storytelling and culture of the product.

Analysis of Designer Brand
The well-known international brands, such as Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, are based on designer brands. At the beginning of the brand, the brand culture and image have been identified. The reason why these designer brands have been standing for a long time is due to the uniqueness of their styles. China's designer brands have come a long way from abroad. But in recent years, with the development of domestic economy, technological progress, improvement of design concept, change of consumption concept and support from various localities, furniture designer brand has mushroomed in the past ten years. Especially in recent years, by participating in the furniture exhibition at home and abroad, the furniture designer brand with creative design strategy has been recognized by the furniture industry.
The consumer group of designer brand furniture is usually a customer with higher income and pursuit personal taste. Such brand positioning is easy to meet the needs of contemporary people in pursuit of individuality, fully embodies their brand characteristics, and expands their market impact in differentiation [2] . Starting from the analysis of influential designer brand furniture can help us further understand the generation, development and future trends of designer brands.

Designer Zhu Xiaojie and Furniture Designer Brand of OPAL
It has been more than 20 years since zhu xiaojie started the furniture designer brand of OPAL in 1994. Zhu Xiaojie, a Chinese furniture industry leader -led his design team to design and manufacture furniture products has become a banner of industry development, OPAL, the designer brand has become the benchmark of Chinese furniture designer brand and even furniture industry. "Have the collection value of contemporary furniture". This is the market evaluation of the OPAL brand. Because each work is not only unique, but also flowing with the fragrance of the national soil. Zhu Xiaojie paid attention to the texture of wood itself, designed according to the characteristics of wood, and made Chinese design and expressed the Chinese way of life. It has the value of collection which makes the designer brand different from the popular brand. The design idea of OPAL "gives people the art of living". The designer draws inspiration from the traditional Chinese architectural culture, the furniture culture and Taoist thought, combines the natural philosophy of Taoism with the design, and integrates the functional materials emphasized in the Nordic furniture style, and has design a series of furniture works which are popular among the people at home and abroad.
Zhu Xiaojie mentioned in his own furniture "money chair" that is able to express the connotation of the Ming style chair only with some lines . Simple but the cohesion of the power, which is the combination of traditional technology and modern skills and art that means the combination of designer thought and life. The "Money Chair" was designed to express the "The inside is square and the outside is round, each other is slowly sublimation" of the Taoist thought [3] . (Figure1. "Money Chair", designed by Zhu Xiaojie) Not only to inherit the Ming style chair but also emphasizes "design is an idea of imitation".
In Zhu Xiaojie's view, designers should not only get rid of the shackles and find the essence of life, but more important is to know themselves and to guide the design with reality. In addition to the design of furniture, Zhu Xiaojie also using the surplus wood produced in the process of furniture processing to designed a series of functional products with sparrows as a prototype, , such as card case, Wine Opener.(Figure2. Card Case, Wine Opener) As American designer Victor Papanek emphasizes in the book "Design for the real world". The most important part of design is an appropriate element in the process of social change. He stresses that the design should take seriously the use of the limited earth's resources and serve the protection of the earth's ecological environment [4] . A designer should have a sense of social responsibility. Before he starts to design, his social and moral judgement must play a role in balancing the relationship between production and resources, design and materials.

Designer Hou Zhengguang and Furniture Designer Brand of MORELESS
Furniture designer brand of MORELESS was founded by Hou Zhengguang in 2010. It mainly designs, produces and sells original furniture and home furnishings with contemporary Chinese literary and artistic forms. Since listing has been widely liked by the public. "more and less" is a problem, a choice and an attitude. The inevitable return of design is simplicity after paying too much for formalism. "more and less" is both moderate and unique like a nature laws similar to a kind of allelopathy. The connotation of designer brand furniture is "brand", which is the core competitiveness and core values. He pointed out that the future of China's design must be in line with the revival of culture, the reduction of ignorance and what is really suitable for the people of the country. He stressed that as a Chinese designer, we should show the Chinese style in our blood through the design.
The MORELESS of design always stressed the "more" thinking and "less" form, "more" function and "less" material. It's furniture looks simple but actually have plenty of functions. It's natural materials selection, simple design and aesthetic sense of details guide people to feel the unique texture of wood. The MORELESS designs have a simple feeling that takes you away from prosperity and return to tranquility. (Figure3, Figure4)   In the whole operation of MORELESS, the design and marketing are divided. MORELESS is a project invested by Hou Zhengguang's Mooma design company. The role of Mooma just a design investor, responsible for brand packaging, product and space design. All marketing is not involved which is responsible for a completely independent sales company. Because it is the investor, there is a greater voice in the design but the right to speak is also from the sales party and they put forward feedback from the first line market [6] . The whole business operation of MORELESS is successful since its inception in 2010. It has developed into a popular furniture designer brand in just a few years. This is a successful case that emphasizes the design change market and the market guidance design.

Conclusions
By analyzing the development process of these designer brands of OPAL and MORELESS which has a leading position in the furniture industry. It can be seen that furniture design with deep thinking rooted in traditional Chinese culture and lifestyle is not only accepted by domestic but also widely praised by foreign countries. As Hegel said, "only the nation is the world". The nationalized language and the emotional language will become a major design trend in the future. Designers are the core of the designer brands, which requires the designers to conform to their own hearts. Only by turning what you want to do into what you can do can you expand your brand influence continuously.
"Creation" is the name of the designer brand, and the designer finds inspiration and the connotation of the product in the traditional culture, art, philosophy and modern life. Through the design technique, the designer transforms this connotation into product characteristics, which satisfies the consumer's psychological needs, that is, the story of the product. Saint Exupéry said "only when the wind of the spirit blows the clay, can we create human beings". Kenya Hara also said, "only when the wind of life philosophy blows people, material and technology, can we create something that transcends the soul of clay". For this reason, "things" are no longer convenient but become elements of life that seem to be able to hear breathing. In the future, the design is to pursue such high-quality creation [7] .
Designer brand is a relatively new concept for the whole furniture market. Consumers don't know what type of furniture they want to choose, who only have a general style trend and functional requirement. They need the specific furniture products to be built by designers. Only when the designer's furniture works are placed, can the customers know whether they are in line with their needs.
The designer brand is gradually changing the development trend of the whole furniture market, which leads the market trend and affects the consumer's aesthetic. Behind the success of MORELESS, it is also told that furniture designers should learn to understand the market besides designing well, but not blindly cater to the market. The design proposition of designer brand is the framework of the whole brand, and the feedback of the market is the concrete filling of the framework and make the design is more mature.