Mothering Nature

Tan Lay Koon, co-founder of Nature Squared, talks about the challenge working with natural resources like feathers, and egg and oyster shells, and finding artisans who are able to work with such delicate materials.

It was in 2000 when Tan Lay Koon made the brave but risky decision to leave her cushy job in the finance industry at the height of the dot.com bubble. Paul Hoeve, her business partner at accounting and consulting giant Arthur Andersen, quit as well, and both thought about doing something radically different in their next career move. At the top of Lay Koon’s list of possibilities was establishing a company that would somehow benefit society, along with creating minimal environmental impact.

“We were particularly concerned that insufficient attention was being paid to sustainability,” she explains. “We felt that most people were either apathetic or driven by a single issue (like climate change, social development or protecting endangered species). Few initiatives took a holistic multifaceted view of sustainability, balancing social, environmental and economic factors.”

That was when they launched Nature Squared, a London-based company specialising in bespoke luxury surfaces made with sustainable materials such as bamboo, mother of pearl, tobacco leaves and reeds.

CAN YOU TELL US HOW YOU CAME TO FOCUS ON TURNING NATURAL MATERIALS INTO HIGH-END SURFACES?

Given that our focus is the use of waste or fast-growing materials in the immediate environment of our source communities, the idea of transforming them into surfaces using superlative craftsmanship was a pretty obvious one to us. Perhaps less obviously, we chose to pitch it to the highest end of the market, targeting superyachts and private jets. We felt that our product should be uncompromising in its beauty and quality.

DID YOU HAVE ANY FORM OF DESIGN TRAINING BEFORE EMBARKING ON THIS VENTURE?