Interior Design Toronto

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Interior Design Toronto - Spotlight on RetroWorks

Douglas Robb

Today's Interior Design Toronto store spotlight focuses on RetroWorks, one of Toronto's premier retailers of handcrafted industrial style furniture, including bookcases, coffee tables, end tables, media consoles, bar carts as well as retail and hospitality shelving and displays.

What brands does RetroWorks represent?

RetroWorks designs and makes all of our furniture locally in Toronto. Jamie Filman is our Head Designer.

Store Locations

RetroWorks is an ONLINE only business located in Toronto. Check out their collection.

Company History

RetroWorks was founded in 2013 by Jamie and Liz, a husband and wife team, who first started to make industrial style furniture for themselves as they furnished their first home together. Then their hobby quickly grew into a full blown passion and they began to craft furniture professionally.

Jamie, an engineer who has been compelled to design and build things his entire life, and Liz, a financial services professional with a background in website development, leveraged their combined skills to start an online store for their industrial furniture business.

RetroWorks began by first designing their staple Industrial Bookcase, and took care to design and include stylized accents that adhered to a true industrial style aesthetic, including our including our steel plate corner brackets, the rivet bolts and our brass corporate boilerplate. These design elements have now become our signature look and are featured on all of our designs.

The business grew by first selling to homeowners across North America, but we did not accept custom orders for the first year. But shortly afterwards, we opened up to custom requests as well as commercial and hospitality customers and as a result, our product line has became much more sophisticated and diverse over the last few years. We enjoy working with our customers now on all custom projects and helping them bring their vision to life.

What makes RetroWorks unique?

RetroWorks specializes in expertly engineered, handcrafted furniture that is equal parts durability and elegance, and is as functional as it is stylish. Our furniture suits any design motif and the quality of our work will stand up to the test of time. That is why we love what we do. Our furniture is strong enough that it will outlast us on this earth and because it evokes a classic vintage aesthetic, it will also never go out of style.

What's new in store?

We've had a huge year in terms of product development this year. We've outfitted a spa in Northern Ontario with large display cases, a coffee counter and some mobile console tables.

We've also designed a tall industrial kitchen console for a local Toronto restaurant that features cabinet doors on the bottom of the shelf and open shelving on the top of the shelf. They use this for their point of sale station as well as for storage of their table and glassware.

None of these items have made it into our catalog yet, but they will be soon, once pictures are available.

However, most recently, we have just completed a custom glass display cabinet for a retailer of luxury merchandise in Calgary. We were really thrilled with the result and we've added it to our regular catalog now. It's a beautiful combination of the cool hardness of steel, the organic warmth of wood and the luxurious sheen of the glass. The glass cabinet can now be found here.

RetroWorks - Plans for the Future

We're currently working on a design for a large, custom wine cabinet for a customer in Toronto. This is going to be a very special piece that will crafted to store a wine fridge, a wine rack, wine glasses and it will feature a showstopper of a walnut countertop, made by another Toronto artisan, Jack from Son of a Woodcutter. We're very excited about this one.

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