The Story of a Family Business

Flexform is a family affair. Now in its third generation, Flexform was founded in the Brianza furniture manufacturing district in Northern Italy. The unique global phenomenon of Italian furniture design originated right here in the 1960s.
A place where the history of many small artisan workshops that have fashioned wood, metal and upholstery since the early 1900s, intersects with that of the great masters of Italian design, trained at the School of Architecture in nearby Milan. Flexform’s roots are deeply embedded in this historical setting.
In 1959, the Galimberti brothers opened an artisan workshop called “Flexform di Galimberti.” It was soon followed by their first showroom where the sofas and armchairs on display found their way, in the postwar era, into elegant buildings in Milan, villas overlooking Lake Como, and even the foyer of the La Scala opera house.
 
Their children transformed the workshop into an industrial facility and, in 1967, incorporated it as Flexform S.p.A. The family’s perceptive insights led to the decision to partner with some of the leading designers of the time: Joe Colombo, Asnago-Vender, Cini Boeri, Rodolfo Bonetto and many others. During the same period, the company’s vision of corporate growth also included investing in a talented young architect-designer named Antonio Citterio, in a partnership that has continued, without interruption, for more than forty years. The 1970s brought a major shift in the company’s conception of its product line. Eschewing any repetition of past styles, production was moved more and more toward original, contemporary designs.