Australian Design Review “Klaro Industrial Design: The new K.I.D on the block“

Klaro Industrial Design, or K.I.D for short, is an emerging product design studio based in Sydney’s Inner West, led by an ambitious creative director who is willing to try, fail and innovate in the workplace fitout sector.

Despite only launching in 2019, K.I.D has cultivated a product range that has a distinct and disruptive presence in the workplace. Solid conical bases, donut-shaped table tops and stout lounge chairs give K.I.D components a quirkiness that belies their heft and practicality.

Height-adjustable CONUS table with a double conical base and the SUMMERDAY chair with recycled HDPE seat and back

A small team of three (“two and a half” if we’re talking in terms of full- and part-time workers), plus a curated supply network, bring the K.I.D personality into Australian offices, led by founder and creative director Alona Klaro. In addition to custom one-offs, the team has produced around 44 products in four years, now aiming for six per year.

“We just got really good at launching products and I think that’s the strategy now: launch few, a couple will survive, a couple we cull, some will stick,” Klaro tells Australian Design Review. 

“And from maybe 44 that we have now, there are probably 10 or 20 that are going super steady and great. The rest get specified every now and then – but they’re cute, so they stay.”

Alona Klaro, creative director of Klaro Industrial Design

The Klaro Industrial Design approach

K.I.D’s ethos is to support local manufacturers “as much as possible”. Klaro and her team seek to not only diversify the interiors they are involved in with authentic, fun and residential-inspired pieces, but also to disrupt, embellish and improve the commercial fitout industry as a whole. 

Her strong commitment to design – despite only being able to enjoy the task about one month out of the year now – is rooted in her training as a sculptor and further studies in interior architecture.

“I think that understanding of aesthetics and how it occupies this space is a good, guiding light when you’re trying to swim through all the processes, manufacturing and all the nitty gritty stuff,” she says.

Pandora Jewellery HQ in Sydney designed by Unispace Global, featuring K.I.D’s TEND curved modular seating. Photo: Steve Brown

All products in the K.I.D range are her “babies”, but this does not mean Klaro blindly backs her designs to the detriment of all practical business interests. Her creativity is tempered by a grounded business ethos, which likely stems from her other background in fitout sales, and project management at a bathroom renovation company.

“I can’t be too selfish and indulge too much into what I think is a design piece because we need to make sure that it actually is easy to specify and it doesn’t take away from the overall idea of the design for the space. Then, of course, functionality is a big one for us and longevity, which modularity feeds back into,” she says.

Ever the businessperson, Klaro is realistic about client needs and expectations.

“Once again, you can’t be too crazy and loud and do something completely out of the box because it actually needs to have real-world commercial application, so that’s kind of the framework you have to always work within. And of course, there is a price point expectation,” she says.

Four height-adjustable COLUMN workstations, with custom powder-coated shrouds

Despite making it look easy, Klaro says she experiences “great difficulty” balancing this price point expectation with her unique design sensibility, sustainability ideals and pursuit of local manufacturing.

“It’s kind of like a gut feeling when too much is too much and what I can get away with and how much I can push it,” she says. 

This intuition can only really be gained from years in business, Klaro says. Imposter syndrome, on the other hand, is not so dependent upon the passage of time. Her advice to designers plagued by it? “Darling, you will never overcome it, just work through it.”

“If you have mental challenges, mental blocks, just work through them. What do you have to lose, really? Just go for it,” she says.

‘Time is precious’

Klaro is also quite pessimistic about the possibility of work-life balance in design, but the sleepless nights and sweaty palms are worthwhile for her. The fulfilling part is beholding end products that “actually solve problems”.

“Knowledge is another thing,” she adds. “I value that more than maybe monetary aspects of the business because you can make [money], you can lose it, but knowledge and experience: that can’t be taken away.”

JLL HQ Victoria designed by JLL, featuring CONUS table adjacent to booth seating. Photo: Tom Blachford

If a project “sinks like the Titanic”, Klaro does not view this as time wasted. The formula used to solve that problem is inevitably applied to another, later design.

“In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think anything, any effort is wasteful. There are many products that I tried to develop and that ended up nowhere, but that gave life to different products because I learned something on that journey,” she says.

Time has become more “precious” as business has picked up at K.I.D. Most of what Klaro does is not about the immediate result, but what’s coming two to four years down the line.

At the moment, she is working on expanding K.I.D’s offering to the European market. This has involved establishing relationships with Chinese manufacturers with strong European supply networks and marketing to new clients.

“We still want to be as we are – our cute little showroom in Enmore, which is down a rabbit hole – still want all that. But what that could do is just maybe a little bit more juice in terms of passive income,” she says.

Klaro Industrial Design may be the new kid on the product design block, but with their strong business ethos and unique designs, they’re playing like seasoned pros.

 SUMMERDAY chair, soft upholstered variant