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Trade terms for professionals and design studios
Sedus is explicit about where the idea comes from. Its Work Café concept borrows from the third places people choose when they are neither at home nor at their desk: cafés, restaurants, hotel lobbies, libraries, parks. se:café is the seating written for that borrowed room, and the product books list the settings by name, from the work café and the canteen to the library corner, the meeting point and the home office.
Each setting has its line. For the tables, Falk Blümler’s se:café soft chair, 445 mm high, with a lounge version lower down and a stool climbing to two heights. For the rooms that need a piece of furniture rather than a seat, Konstantin Thomas’s backless bench, his high bench, a diner built around a table, and a café chair of beech or ash, solid wood throughout. In an Indian office those pieces double as visitor chairs for a reception where guests wait at a table, and they furnish the pantry and cafeteria where the team actually meets.
Counted by product, that makes eight: armrests or none on the soft chair, whose frame is a skid, four steel legs or four wooden ones; the soft lounge chair; a soft stool that reaches 625 or 780 mm and therefore sits among the bar stools; a bench 1,600 mm long; a high bench 1,400 mm long sharing the stool’s two heights; a diner whose table measures 1,400 × 700 mm; the wooden chair and its lounge sister. La Mercanti lays the three lines on one floor plan so that the pantry, the lobby and the quiet corner are furnished from a single order.
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The se:café bench is 1,600 mm wide with a seat height of 450 mm, fully upholstered, with no backrest and no armrests. Because nothing rises above the seat it can be used from either side, which is why Sedus places it between zones as much as against a wall. It comes on a 4-leg steel or wooden frame and arrives partly assembled in a carton.
Two seat heights of the same product. On the se:café soft stool and the high bench, studio means a seat at 625 mm and bar a seat at 780 mm. Sedus describes studio as the intermediate height that lets people sit down and stand up spontaneously, while bar is the height for a counter or a high desk. The high bench frame follows at 650 and 800 mm.
Solid beech or solid ash. Beech is offered natural, black, ruby red, deep green or midnight blue; ash natural, black or stained to natural oak. With the Viennese cane seat the choice narrows to natural or black beech and natural, black or oak-stained ash. Sedus states that the wood is FSC-certified and that it develops a patina with use.
Sedus keeps it simple: light soiling is blown off with compressed air, vacuumed, or removed with lukewarm water and a damp cloth, using only a mild detergent or the cleaning foam Sedus offers. Leather is rubbed with a soft woollen cloth and, for heavier marks, treated with a product for aniline-dyed leather. The upholstered parts themselves can only be replaced at the factory.
That Sedus guarantees the parts to repair a se:café chair or bench for ten years, alongside the five-year guarantee. Both figures appear on the environmental product information, together with two construction choices that make repairs possible: the covers are not glued into place and single parts can be replaced later, as the product books state for every line.
Part of the se:café family arrives assembled and part arrives in kit form. Five steps starting from the heaviest carton so that nothing waits in the corridor.
The se:café bench is the heaviest single item, 24.21 kg on a steel frame, and it is delivered partly assembled with a plug-in and screw system. Bring those cartons to the room where the bench will stand before opening anything else.
Soft chair, lounge chair, stool and wooden chair of se:café all arrive fully assembled in cartons. Unpack them where they will be used; the wooden chair ships with plastic glides already fitted, the felt side is turned only if the floor asks for it.
The instructions for the se:café bench list M5, M6 and M8 screws and one torque for all of them, 6 Nm, with separate hardware for the wooden and the steel frame. Follow the numbered sequence; the optional steps at the end apply to the high bench and the diner.
Every se:café product carries its maximum user weight on a label fixed to the piece: 130 kg on steel and skid frames, 110 kg on wooden frames. Read it before the first meeting fills the bench, and keep the glides clean so that the floor is protected from day one.
The se:café covers are specified surface by surface. A photo of each piece next to its carton label is the quickest way to confirm that the seat and the two faces of the back match the order. La Mercanti checks the delivery note against those photos before the installer leaves.
