“I still remember the smell of wood wool when I came to the workshop as a boy,” Lars reflects. “Back then, foam wasn’t as common. The smell, the atmosphere – it stayed with me.” For young Lars, the workshop was more than a place of work. “It was a playground. I loved coming there.”

With generations of upholsterers in the family – from his father and grandfather to uncles and great-uncles – the path felt almost inevitable. “I never really thought about doing anything else. It felt natural that I should be one too.”

As the company evolved, so did its ambitions. In 2007, Lars and his wife, Christina, relocated to Ho Chi Minh City to open a new chapter in Wendelbo’s production story. The team then counted just 20 people. In those early years, the couple introduced an extensive training programme to equip employees with the skills, care, and sensibility required by Wendelbo’s approach to upholstery.

Today, that team has grown to several hundred, and the knowledge passed down from one pair of hands to the next is still felt in every design. “I’m always proud when I walk through production and see what our skilled employees are able to produce,” Lars says. His son, Christian da Silva Wendelbo, now leads the production in Vietnam, continuing the family legacy into its third generation.