As the first case study of my doctoral research, I have explored the recent business and marketing models executed by the iconic Finnish housewares company Artek. I argue that Artek’s case may epitomise the sustainability potential of design heritage management when engaging the capacities of a corporate brand with key strategic elements such as design iconicity and collective memory. I offer the analysis of Artek as a real case where readers can relate to the previous theoretical discussions of permanent valorisation. The reason why I focus on Finland is the unique national and historical importance of design and applied arts to that country, which inspires a lively atmosphere of debate and discussion about design heritage. My main argument is that the company’s management of Finnish modern design ethos achieves a synthesis of business and consumer interests while promoting slower modes of consumption that goes against the grain of the predominant fashion mechanism.

The case study aims to analyse how Artek employs the Finnish design heritage through new cultural and business grounds in which customers gain access to the company’s selection of special value second hand home decoration items such as furniture and lighting fixtures.

This access enables customers to sell and buy items, and perhaps more importantly, to participate in the search to grow and articulate a collective memory on Finnish design as a means of supporting enduring ownership habits. I argue that through such a dialogue, customers may achieve a role in reshaping the Finnish design mythology. Artek has a distinct historical significance and a unique design identity, an identity primarily created by Alvar Aalto (1898–1976), the internationally acclaimed architect and the company’s designer and co-founder. As Artek’s artefacts enjoy an iconic status, based on the historical and social values they possess today, the company’s marketing approach aims to accommodate this iconicity in order to raise public awareness on diverse benefits of enduring product qualities. Whereas sustainability is championed as a brand asset, employment of permanent valorisation in the promotion of durable consumption provides a highly interesting case in which the principle of feasibility that guides this research, in particular discussion of the synthesis of public and private interests, finds an opportunity for application.

This study scrutinises examples of the company’s business practices, with a focus on the 2nd Cycle project, which competently arranges diverse monetary and intellectual gains while increasing awareness of consumer responsibility in terms of sustainability. The 2nd Cycle project provides rich empirical data for examination in its unique employment of consumables that aims to enhance the social good as well as to create new economic opportunities, know-how, and human capacities.

For example, I attempt to show how Artek transforms the Finnish national design mythology, producing a more inclusive version extending the exclusive “design hero” phenomenon and allowing consumers to emerge as new “heroes”. In order to support this argument, I focus on the 2nd Cycle project and the business operations of the latter and Artek’s 2nd Cycle store. Arguing that the theoretical discussions elaborated over the previous chapters can resonate in the real world, I also analyse Artek’s recent marketing efforts, which have championed sustainability as a brand asset. Linking permanent valorisation, product longevity and, ultimately, sustainable consumption, I focus on how the company’s long-established cultural and historical characteristics are reproduced and capitalised upon by addressing emerging consumer aspirations and needs in its 2nd Cycle store. I begin the chapter with an exploration of Artek’s 2nd Cycle project and its Vintage store in Helsinki, followed by a discussion of the background and development of the operation of 2nd Cycle’s resale system. I provide detailed information about the qualities of today’s operations through a number of interviews with Artek employees. As the main line of argument, I stress the collective generation of diverse capacities and meanings that are sympathetic to and even activist (but not revolutionary) in addressing social needs and concerns related to generating sustainable capital accumulation.

I have adopted ethnographic research methods when analysing the study cases: field observations, interviews, and online survey. The field observations and interviews for the case study in Finland were undertaken between 2011 and 2016, and I continuously gathered data through numerous visits in Artek’s Helsinki store dedicated to the 2nd Cycle project.