Ib Laursen ApS
Ribe is the oldest town in Denmark. Those who visit it see medieval lanes, a Romanesque cathedral and – on the outskirts, at Øster Vedsted Vej – the company that Ib and Tove Laursen built from a simple furniture shop in 1971. Today a 9,000-square-metre complex of offices, showrooms and warehouse stands there. Over 3,500 products. Three in-house brands. Distribution in six European countries. In between lie fifty years of family history, trips to Asia, direct supply agreements, a showroom that gives retailers the opportunity to experience collections in person, and a design language that has not changed – even though everything else has. What Ib Laursen sells today follows a logic that was there from the very beginning: products that work in daily life and look good doing it. Not despite each other, but simultaneously. The Mynte ceramic range embodies this – bowls, mugs and bakeware in stoneware in coordinated colours, robust enough for the bakery, beautiful enough for the table. At miniSchoggi, selected Ib Laursen products are available.
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Ib Laursen – From a Furniture Shop in Denmark's Oldest Town to Scandinavian Design Wholesale
Understanding how Ib Laursen works means understanding Ib and Tove Laursen. Him: a salesperson through and through, previously specialised in outdoor and hunting equipment. Her: a trained laboratory technician who brings the craft sense for systematic thinking and customer contact. When the couple takes over a furniture shop in Ribe in 1971, each brings something different – and that is precisely what makes the difference. Under the name Ny Form the shop becomes better known. New branches arise. The range grows beyond furniture: delicatessen goods, hand-woven baskets, kitchen utensils, freshly ground coffee – an idiosyncratic mix that follows no concept but a conviction: good home life deserves good products.
The real turning point comes in 1979. Ib and Tove travel to Asia – not as tourists, but to visit suppliers directly. What comes back are direct trade relationships, new design ideas and the first delivery: stuffed animals, porcelain dolls, cloth nappies. A range that initially sounds surprising but answers a fundamental question: what do people want when they want to create a good home? Ib Laursen has always observed this question rather than calculated it.
Fewer Shops, Greater Impact
What follows is a decision that many companies shy away from: selling the shops. Instead, the couple concentrates on wholesale and export. Retailers, not end consumers, become the target group. This makes the company less visible in direct customer contact – and far more effective in market penetration. A confectionery factory is added, new premises are occupied, and the headquarters that the company still uses today comes into being in Ribe.
The step away from retail is what makes Ib Laursen what it is: a wholesaler that thinks like a designer. The focus is not on margins but on collections. Not on stock turnover but on assortment logic – on the fact that a Mynte bowl in Cornflower Blue works alone and works equally well with ten other colours alongside it.
Ribe, 9,000 m² and Three Brands with a Shared DNA
The complex on the outskirts of Ribe was expanded in 2019 with a new warehouse and main building. Around 55 employees work here, complemented by sales representatives and agents in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Today Peter Laursen leads the company as Managing Director – the family remains at the centre.
Three in-house brands carry the company's design philosophy outward: Mynte is the best known – kitchen ceramics in stoneware across a growing colour palette, designed for daily use and creative combinability. ALTUM carries the sea and the coast within it, with clear, calm form language for spa and wellness products. Stillenat is the quietest of the three: contemporary Nordic aesthetics that stay in the background so that the home can be in the foreground. All three share the same starting point: products that do not end up in a display cabinet, but in life.
What 'Nordic Design' Means at Ib Laursen in Concrete Terms
Nordic design is a term that promises much and is rarely explained. At Ib Laursen it means: forms that repeat and combine. Colours that are muted and seasonal but not cold. Materials – stoneware, ceramics, wood, linen – that improve with frequent use rather than deteriorate, developing patina rather than wear. No overloaded decor. No design presence that outshines the product. The Mynte range, for example, is conceived so that a single bowl works alone and five of them in different colours on a table work just as well – because proportions, surface texture and colour temperatures are coordinated. This is not chance, but the result of a design process that takes place in Ribe and is influenced by trips to Asia as much as by Danish flora, fauna motifs and trade fair discoveries.
The Range
Over 3,500 products across kitchen, table, decoration, textiles, lighting, furniture, garden and seasonal. Within the kitchen range, Mynte stoneware ceramics and bakeware are at the fore: mixing bowls and bowl sets in various sizes and colours, cake plates and cake stands, baking tins and kitchen accessories. Mynte ceramics are food-safe and dishwasher-suitable.
Product Range at a Glance
Mixing bowls & bowl sets · Cake plates & cake stands · Mynte stoneware ceramics · Kitchen accessories · Decoration & home accessories
Ib Laursen at miniSchoggi
There is kitchen equipment that works – and gets put away when the cake is finished. And there is kitchen equipment that stays: that one puts on the table because it makes a statement there too. Mixing bowls in which one stirs batter and which then remain as serving bowls. Cake stands that elevate the cake without upstaging it. Bowl sets used in the bakery that simply stay out when serving, because they look good enough to justify no transfer to other tableware.
Ib Laursen has made this duality into a product philosophy: that a useful object does not have to choose between functional and beautiful. In Mynte ceramics this is visible – in the choice of colours, in the robustness of the stoneware, in a form language that is neither minimalist-cold nor decoratively overloaded, but precisely in between. Nordic cosiness you can touch. miniSchoggi carries Ib Laursen because this ambition matches what miniSchoggi customers seek in the bakery and at the table: products that can do both. The range at miniSchoggi includes mixing bowls, cake stands, cake plates and bowl sets and is continuously expanded – with the pieces from the Mynte collection equally suited to kitchen, baking and table design.
1971. Ribe. Denmark. Where cosiness and design are the same thing. Ib Laursen.