Umbra (company)


Umbra is a home accessories design and manufacturing company. The company has headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and satellite offices in the Netherlands, Brazil, the United States, and China. The firm sells more than 2,000 home products through over 25,000 retailers in 120 countries.

History

The firm was founded in 1978 by childhood friends Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan. The firm opened its first store in Toronto's Queen West District in 2007. It has retail stores in the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, China, Israel, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, and the Umbra and Umbra Shift e-commerce websites. Umbra products are also sold through other retailers.
in downtown Toronto

Designs

Umbra has an in-house design team headed by Matt Carr, consisting of over 30 designers in Canada and abroad. Many independent designers have also collaborated with the firm. Notable ones who have made significant contributions to Umbra include Karim Rashid, Hlynur Atlason, and Harry Allen.
In 1996, Umbra teamed up with Rashid to create what would become one of the company’s most well-known products; the GARBO trash can. The wastebasket was named after actress Greta Garbo, mimicking the shape of her body. It sold more than two million units within the first two years of production and continues to sell today in a miniature version, GARBINO. It was donated to the Brooklyn Museum in 1999 and added into the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in 2000. In 1997, it earned the Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award.
Rashid also designed the OH Chair for Umbra; a "scoop" of plastic, making use of negative space, modeled into a chair. These chairs are still in the firm's catalogue today.

Umbra Shift

Umbra Shift is a brand extension of Umbra that utilizes higher end materials and different production techniques. The products are sold through the independent retailers and the Umbra Shift website.

Honors