Objects of desire (on not being a labelling victim but wanting quality produce in my life)

I’m not much of one for designer brands. In fact I generally try to avoid them (OK I have a Zippo and I occasionally lust after a SMEG but that’s the limit of my engagement with the world of branding). A wise man once said to me you should never skimp when buying shoes or a mattress – you spend most of your life supported by one or the other. To that list something else should be added – an office chair.

I’ve wanted a Scandinavian knee stool for several years. I had one for a while – actually a gift from a fellow SENSE member but it was already near the end of its natural lifespan and I used it until it was well past that stage (the foam had almost spilled out of the holes in the fabric I was almost kneeling on bare wood covered by a strip of fabric). Yesterday I saw an uber-trendy furniture shop close to the Beurs and just popped in, on the off chance, to ask if they had any. They didn’t but the guy was incredibly helpful and told me where I might find one. He couldn’t remember the name of the store or street but did a google map search s and showed me the where the store was located. Our conversation switched through from English (I don’t know the French or Dutch for Scandinavian kneeling stool) to Dutch to French- but hey that’s Brussels for you. It turned out the shop was almost in my back yard – down a street I might pass by at least every week and directly on the way home. I found it easily. It was still open (though the hour was late). And, they had not one but three different varieties of knee stool – including one on rollers. ‘I want that’ I thought but there was no price tag. So I had to ask (and there is an adage that says if you need to ask the price you can’t afford it). 400E: for an absolutely minimalist piece of furniture. Most of the cars I have owned in my lifetime cost less than that (but then I have always been a bottom feeder in the car market). The saleswoman said it was Norwegian. That explained things (a bit). I asked (somewhat jokingly) if they had any Estonian copycat versions. Sadly not.

I left the store – not because I couldn’t afford the stool – but because it seemed such an outrageous price for something so small (and one – or at least I don’t make purchases of that magnitude on the spur of the moment). Then, on the way home I started thinking. An office chair is a business expense, so to calculate the real cost I can subtract 21% (VAT) and then 40% (writing it off as a business expense). That knocks the price down to around 200 Euro. Suddenly that chair doesn’t look so expensive after all. Especially not if I consider I might use it for the next ten years. That’s say 2000 working days. That equates to 10 Euro cents per day cost. That stool has suddenly become an attainable object of desire. And I don’t even know the brand name!