Introducing SATONE, the laundry basket you can sit on!

The 40440 SATONE laundry basket, which has a natural and soft impression among ZACK's rigid items due to its wooden lid and unbleached cotton bag, was released at Ambiente Frankfurt in February 2019, and the matte black 40437 (pictured above) was added at Ambiente in February 2021.

After its release, it has been handled not only at our B-Sign shop but also at The Conran Shop and FLYMEe, and while it hasn't been a huge hit, it has become a staple item that sells steadily throughout the year.

Recently, during a business meeting with a major mail-order company that has featured ZACK many times, the topic of this laundry basket came up. I mentioned, "The wire is extra thick, so it's extremely sturdy, to the point where even I, an adult, can stand on it without it budging. At exhibitions, when customers aren't around, I sometimes sit on it like a chair to take a break. Haha." They then gave me some valuable information: "We can't write 'can be used as a chair' in print unless it has passed durability tests for 'chairs' such as those from JIS."

As expected of a major company, they are very meticulous about such details.

So! Driven by curiosity about whether it could truly be used as a chair, I put it through the JIS tests!

Due to very strict regulations, I cannot specify "where," but it is an official industrial testing facility operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. (I am also making sure not to show the faces of the testing personnel.)
The test was "JIS S 1203:1998 Furniture - Chairs and Stools," and we conducted three tests:
1. Static load test for the seat
2. Durability test for the seat
3. Impact resistance test for the seat
In particular, the durability test (No. 2) involved applying a force of 950 Newtons (approximately 97 kg) 25,000 times, which was a long process taking about 3 business days with the testing machine running. So, after observing tests 1 and 3, I left the durability test to them and went home. As a result, I received a test report stating that it successfully passed all tests!

Therefore, we can now proudly call it a "sittable laundry basket," and we have renewed the product name to "Sittable Laundry Basket."
Initially, I was a bit hesitant about how to describe "sittable," but when I searched for "sittable" products on Amazon in the US, I found that the word "Sittable" was frequently used, mostly for box-shaped stools with storage space inside. Although it's not a very familiar word in Japan (only one fishing cooler box came up on Rakuten), we decided to use "Sittable" as a new term.

Everyone, don't you find that a laundry basket, usually placed in the anteroom of the bathroom, can be a bit of an obstruction? But what if it also served as a stool? Wouldn't it be convenient to be able to sit down in front of the sink or after a bath?!

Or, wouldn't it be convenient to be able to sit down when hanging out laundry, taking it in, or folding it? As you live longer, you naturally accumulate more things. It's better to have as few things as possible. A stool and a laundry basket. A laundry basket and a chair. It's a two-in-one excellent product. Its durability is guaranteed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

ZACK 40440F SATONE Sittable Laundry Basket Hairline finish With wooden lid, cotton bag 43,780 yen (tax included)

ZACK 40437F SATONE Sittable Laundry Basket Matte black finish With wooden lid, cotton bag 43,780 yen (tax included)