40 minutes from the center of Saigon, I arrived at a 5,000-square-meter factory in Binh Duong, where BằNG — an award-winning furniture and lighting brand — comes to life. Thomas Bình-Minh Vincent (Co-founder, COO, and Head of Design at BằNG) greeted me with a bright smile and led me on a tour through the factory.
The sounds of equipment and the movement of makers stood in sharp contrast to my usual writing desk. But in that energy, I began to feel the meaning behind Thomas’s motto: “Design ain’t no office jobs,” and BằNG’s core philosophy: “From factory to your space.”
Founded in 2021, BằNG has already reached MoMA Design Store in New York, Centre Pompidou, and Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris — earning awards like Archiproducts Design Award (2023), MoMA’s historic Prize Design Award (2024), VMark Design Award (2024) and German Design Award (2025).
Thomas came to Vietnam 9 years ago. Since then, he’s been with Elek, a furniture and lighting manufacturing company, where he later co-founded BằNG with the CEO Marc Bregeault in November 2021.
Back to the factory on our tour, Thomas stopped at a welding station to point out the hammers made in custom sizes by the craftspeople at Elek. They modify their own tools to better suit their hands and tasks. “That’s how I know they love what they do,” he said. For Thomas, those are the people he wants to work with.
For me, that one moment said so much about the people behind BằNG and about why I felt compelled to learn more. When we returned from the factory to BằNG’s studio, I asked Thomas about the motto that had stuck with me since the start of the tour.
Thomas, was there anyone who inspired you with the motto ‘design ain’t no office job’?
My parents!
They work at offices. But at home they've done a lot of DIY. I also joined them when I was a kid, such as building a wooden terrace, doing tiles, fixing my bicycle,... Sometimes I didn’t want to do it, but looking back, it was a good time.
I think my parents noticed that I liked creating things, so when I was 8 years old, they sent me to a plastic art workshop, where I could experiment with paint, clay and do mashed paper.
Even now, somehow I work the same way. I can’t do the same thing for eight hours straight like my sister (she can read a book for hours, ugh!). So my mornings are for computer work. Then in the afternoons, I head to the workshop and switch to production and design work.
How has your experience at Elek influenced your work at BằNG?
Elek and BằNG are different at their core, but we share the same workshop environment.
Elek was founded in 2007 and focuses on B2B, manufacturing LED lighting and furniture for international clients. BằNG is a designer brand with a more B2C approach, but still a part of Elek.
That said, my experience at Elek has been incredibly valuable in running BằNG. It gave me hands-on knowledge in areas like certification, product safety, standard packaging, and international freight logistics. Working with clients from the US, Europe, Australia, and Vietnam has also helped me understand a wide range of aesthetic and usage preferences.
I’ve been with Elek since I moved to Vietnam in 2016, starting as an intern and eventually moving into a management role while running BằNG with a small team of eight.
There’s a parallel I like to draw with Karimoku, a Japanese brand established in the 1940s. They have large factories and a long-standing reputation. A few years ago, they launched a sub-brand called Karimoku New Standard. While everything, from manufacturing to infrastructure, remains the same, they brought in new designers to create products that appeal to modern tastes.
What kind of products would you like to give birth to?
Products that form relationships with users. Something empowering. Beyond mere ownership, it creates memories and lives with you.
You know, the last thing I threw away was a jean jacket I had for 15 years. Still, I cut the tag off and kept it for the memories I had had with the jacket.
So why do you think people feel drawn to Lớp Lamp?
We have some customers that buy Lớp Lamp because the lamp reminds them of Vasarely, an artist known for working with squares and circles.
Others appreciate that BằNG designs and manufactures everything in-house, offering direct support from the makers.
That connection gives a sense of reassurance, especially for those more conscious about how and where they buy.
We've also heard from customers living in small spaces — they love that the lamp can be styled in different ways, even used as a tiny shelf or display. Some tuck a vinyl record between the layers. In our interviews with the customers, “multi-use design for small spaces” comes up a lot.
But it should be noted that, while BằNG is best known for Lớp Lamp, we don’t just focus on lighting. We aim to create unboring objects.
How do you ensure your products form a bond with customers?
We do follow a few key principles in our design:
- Understandable: The product’s shape and construction make it intuitive to use, easy to unassemble and repair without much instruction.
- Open: It’s adaptable, allowing users to customize it to suit their own needs or preferences.
- Innovative: It aims to spark curiosity and evoke a meaningful emotional response.
- Common sense: Reaching all the previous principles while staying down to earth.
When it comes to creating products that are emotionally connected with customers, we also try to offer simplexity, a mix of simplicity and complexity that sparks curiosity and invites interaction.
Take Lớp Lamp, for instance. The initial concept was about capturing the idea of something floating inside something else. You can make a box, and hang the opal glass with a wire. Or you can use some technology with the magnet to make the glass float.
But those approaches create passive use cases. People would just look at it, like a sculpture, without actually engaging with it. That’s not what we want.
So I reimagined it as a sphere floating within layered forms, which became the current shape of Lớp Lamp. To make the interior visible, I needed transparency. The most accessible transparent material in the factory was acrylic. That’s how the form came together, through a mix of conceptual intent and manufacturing constraints.
This is our vision of "unboring".
Qua Mirror’s design process is similar to that of Lớp, or anything other product that I design. The only difference is Qua Mirror was commissioned by the curator at Grand Palais Design Store Paris. I sketched a very minimal rectangular offset frame with a bent leg. It was made for a French museum, so in my own taste, it was good like this - neat and nice.
But when I showed it to others, the feedback was, “It’s nice… but just a rectangle.”
That pushed us to rethink it. I collaborated with Hien, a designer who was working at BằNG at the time. Together, we developed the current form of the Qua Mirror.
Here you’re gonna laugh, but when you look at yourself in the mirror, what do you do?
Many times we will tilt our head a bit.
Voila! Here’s a mirror that tilts with you and echoes your emotion. We want to give people a bit of surprise from a fleeting moment through this mirror.
That idea came from my walks around Saigon. Motorbike mirrors always caught my attention as their reflections are full of unexpected details. They offered me a new way of exploring and observing the world around me — and that spirit lives on in Qua Mirror.
Most importantly, it encourages interaction. Just like Lớp Lamp, which users can rotate to experience different lighting effects, the Qua Mirror adapts to different uses. One of my friends even places it on his desk facing the door, so he can see if someone’s sneaking up behind him.
Yes, at BằNG, we fight passivity. We want our products to invite you in, and to live with you, so that over time, they become part of your story.
Do you have a recipe for simplexity?
To me, it's about removing what's unnecessary and refining so that what's left cannot be taken out.
Honestly, maybe in another 50 years I’ll be able to give you a more proper recipe. For now, it’s more like a grandma making her signature soup. There’s no fixed formula, just a feeling built from years of experience and layers of experimentation.
Experience ensures that our products meet functional and quality standards. Experimentation brings in the "unboring" element that gives each object its signature.
I’ll add to that the idea of designing for interaction. I believe that only when a product is visually understandable can people truly interact with it, repair it, and live with it over a long time. Of course, durability matters too. We have to build high-quality objects that last. And when you do that, people start to take care of them. They form a relationship with them. That’s when a product becomes meaningful.
I also believe that unboring objects come from unboring processes.
For me, the factory environment is full of inspiration. Sometimes, it starts with a simple question: What can I make with this machine? Whether it’s a laser cutter, grooving tool, bending press, spinning lathe, welding setup, or even an old-school inox polishing machine – every tool sparks a different idea and possibilities.
Here in Vietnam at our factory, we use traditional machines, we do not have a fully automatic production line. Our work is still manual and handmade. I love these machines because they're understandable and intuitive. And that simplicity can lead to very creative outcomes.
Usually, after sketching and designing either at the studio or at home, I spend about a week in the workshop building a prototype with the makers hand in hand. Yes, I could hand it over to the makers and only check at the end when it's done, but I prefer doing it with them, because along the way, I often notice small things that help me improve the design.
I really believe that when we understand how things work, life becomes more interesting. And when we embrace limitations, creativity happens.
How would you describe your customers?
At first, we thought they must be design-conscious. But after talking with many customers, we realized it’s actually broader than that. Our customers are people who care about well-being. They want to create a space that feels good to live in.
Now many people rent over owning a house, which means they often can’t hang things on the walls. So something as simple as Lớp Lamp can completely shift the atmosphere. It becomes a source of comfort, a warm, ambient light waiting for them like a full moon when they walk through the door. It helps them feel relaxed, grounded.
And yes, they’re also drawn into something empowering and colorful, which makes their space unboring.
Ten years ago, if you asked “Thomas, do you think you’ll ever design something that people around the world would want?” I would definitely say “No way!”
But now, I think it’s encouraging to see a single object resonate with people across continents.
Design work can be lonely sometimes. But these days, thanks to social media, we get tagged in customer posts and reviews. We can see our creations in people's lives.
I think it's a privilege to be invited into people’s homes. Often, they’ll send us photos of their favorite corners, freshly cleaned over the weekend, with the lamp in place. It’s like the lamp becomes part of a ritual, a presence that makes the space feel personal and special. In moments like that, it almost feels like we’re close friends.
BằNG now even goes to bars, restaurants and music shows. It shows our objects are alive in many kinds of spaces, and that makes the work feel even more meaningful.
Anything that you would never know if you didn’t choose to work at a manufacturing company in Vietnam?
Some agencies in Europe have workshops, but to be honest, in terms of size, they’re more like R&D workshops compared to a real factory in Vietnam.
Working in a workshop environment in Vietnam lets you see the full picture, what happens behind the scenes in the industry. You learn everything from A to Z. You get to touch the machines, understand materials, and see how design decisions actually play out in real life.
Here’s something 99% of designers would rarely think about unless they have worked in a factory.
Look at the base of a lamp. If you design it too thin, the assembly team has no space to tuck the cables. It’s not just an aesthetic issue. It can create damage during use or shipping. Then, your quality control team comes back and asks for a redesign. That’s inefficient.
But when you understand every part of the manufacturing process — what’s required, what’s possible — you can design with those constraints in mind from the beginning. By the time we reach production, only minor adjustments are needed.
One thing excites you about building BằNG in Vietnam?
I love how BằNG surprises people, especially those from Europe or the U.S.
When they think of Vietnam, they often imagine traditional scenes: weaving, bamboo, rural craft. That’s beautiful, of course, and we want to show another side, a more vibrant, industrial, and contemporary Vietnam.
I’m proud that BằNG is a Vietnamese brand bringing its design to the world.
All our collections are named in Vietnamese, just like our brand name.
“Bằng” is a preposition that means “made by” (a process) or “made of/from” (a material). That name reflects our core belief: with thoughtful execution rooted in material and process, even the simplest sketch can become something meaningful.
One unboring object at your house?
Dish Doctor by Marc Newson! I use it to put my notebooks and art prints.
