With Helena Christensen as an artistic director, BoConcept marries Danish design with subtle sex appeal. Having just opened Ireland's “most experiential design store”, the great Dane furniture firm joins a long tradition of fabrication in Meath's county town.
Anyone who’s enjoyed a night out in Dublin in Big Romance, Fidelity, Hen’s Teeth or Allta has had their ears opened to the rich immersive audio design of Toby Hatchett.
Layer that with the slick architectural nous of hospitality queens, Catherine Crowe and Lucy Rainey of Luca Architecture and a budget of €2 million and you get a 500 square metre space of contemporary living, dining, bedroom, home office and outdoor furniture, that Barry Rochford, owner of the BoConcept franchise in Ireland, says is " the most experiential design store in Ireland”.
Bolzano 2.5 seat sofa, €2769, matching chair €2037, Expose coffee table, €889, matching side €399, Bermuda pouf, €719
This is Rochford's second standalone store for the brand. It also has a shop in the Beacon Quarter in D18 and a concession in Arnotts, D2.
In the Navan unit, its latest designs are on show.
These include the Catskills collection by Christensen, who Rochford describes as “a global designer who has brought credibility to the brand.
"Anyone from the 1980s and 1990s will identify her as an icon.
"Her following is such that we got picked up by a lot of fashion publications as a result. Her established photography and design background is real.”
While BoConcept dates from 1952, its franchise model launched in 1993 when the first store opened in Paris.
It is Denmark’s most global retail furniture chain, specialising in premium quality interior design for the urban-minded customer.
It now has a presence in 65 countries with 300 plus stores and also owes some of its success to designer Morten Georgsen, who has created some of its signature pieces, including the Bergamo sofa, the Modena chair, Santiago occasion tables and the Hamilton dining chair.
The designer attended the official opening today, Thursday, March 26th, and relishes the reach these pieces have had on the company site: "What good is beautiful design if it never gains widespread acceptance?" he asks.
"At the end of the day, furnishing is a practical need that we all have, and in that sense, we all deserve good style and quality that works."
"When you combine pleasing proportions with beautiful colours, materials and craftsmanship, you create a design that evokes a good feeling," Morten adds.
The look is timeless, contemporary design, with a lot of textured fabrics to switch it up, Rochford explains.
"They play differently with light, mineral colours and more muted shades.”
But why did he pick Navan as the location for the second store?
The Royal County’s county town has allure and heritage, he says, who has been involved with the contemporary furniture brand as a franchisee since 2008.
In addition to being the hometown of some of the nation’s funniest men, including Tommy Tiernan and Dylan Moran, James Bond, aka Pierce Brosnan, is also a Navan man.
It has also been a home and furniture manufacturing centre since the 1900s, with Templeton Carpets, a carpet factory started there in 1938 by Captain Newsom, grandfather to the late Henry Mountcharles of Slane Castle.
Templeton Carpets also had a base in Scotland and supplied carpets for the royal coronations up to and including that of Queen Elizabeth II in the 1950s.
They carpeted earlier iterations of the White House in Washington and luxury liners of the era.
The new store is in Beechwood Homepark, where its neighbours include upscale tile, heating and bathroom outfitter, Versatile Group, everything you need for walls and woodcare at Johnstone’s Decorating Centre, and The 1933 Furniture Company, run by a second generation of Moran brothers, whose sibling is comedian Dylan Moran.
The location is pertinent for its good connectivity. With a population in the region of 34,000 people, according to the 2022 CSO figures, it is the fifth largest town in Ireland, after Drogheda, Dundalk, Swords and Bray.
It is located 50km north-west of Dublin city centre and is easily accessed via Junctions 8 and 9 of the M3 Motorway.
BoConcept Navan is open from 10 am-5:30 pm, seven days a week
