Inside the stark white gallery at Umbra’s headquarters, company president Les Mandelbaum is pointing out a set of dainty teacups partially smeared in pink or lime green resin.

There is about these teacups a touch of whimsy, a whiff of art and still a sense of purpose: the effect you might get if you set a child free among her grandmother’s china with a set of paint.

All in all, these found objects neatly sum up the design philosophy at the Canadian company that first brought high design to lowly household objects and made them affordable to the masses.

"There’s a sense of humility, a sense of art and a sense of fun. And they’re also functional. It’s not overly serious stuff,
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Fast forward to 2007 and the Toronto based firm has 650 employees and $160 million in annual sales around the globe,
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Internationally renowned designers,
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Casual contemporary design once shunned by all but the edgiest retailers and urban consumers has come of age. "It’s almost mundane," says Mandelbaum.

And that’s Umbra’s challenge now. The market for these kinds of goods has expanded but so has the number of imitators and competitors,
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Industrial design guru Jules Goss says Umbra has stayed ahead of the game by constantly innovating and evolving. One new design trend, for example,
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"It’s easy to rip off an Umbra product,
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The company says it replaces 25 per cent of its products every year. Umbra’s founders are also "extremely pragmatic in their approach,
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One sign that Umbra is maturing as a design firm is its decision to open its first flagship store, Goss says. Such stores allow brands to communicate their philosophy and identity directly with consumers,
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Not intended to compete directly with other retailers, flagship or "concept" stores aim to cement the image of the brand in the minds of consumers by showcasing the products’ unique attributes. Nike has them; so does Ralph Lauren. They are usually limited to one in each major market. Umbra says if the Toronto store does well it will open others in London and New York

Visitors to the Umbra store, scheduled to open in May in Toronto’s funky Queen West neighbourhood, can watch a designer at work,
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That could include the fishbone shaped soap dish or the "floating" shelf,
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"I don’t think Torontonians know we have a global impact," Mandelbaum says during a recent tour of the company’s Scarborough headquaters.

A series of photographs in the staff cafeteria tracks the company’s progress from its early days. Here are Mandelbaum and Rowan in a photo at the start of their great business adventure, looking a bit like the former musical duo Simon and Garfunkel in the late ’70s. Their friendship dates back much further.

"It was a schoolyard thing. We all lived at Bathurst and Glencairn. Three houses in a row, each with two or three boys in them,
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Another boyhood friend, Duff Rosenberg, is the company’s vice president of finance and operations. Mandelbaum remembers when Duff’s little sister was awarded the nickname "Dufflet." She went on to found Dufflet Pastries, one of Toronto’s best known bakeries.

For a time, they went their separate ways. and then started a music equipment business. Rowan pursued design at George Brown College and spent time living in India. But they never really lost touch.

In 1979, they started the company together with one item a roller blind Rowan designed of a blue wave cresting on a white background. They called the company Umbra, which means "shade" in Latin. The blind didn’t sell that well, Mandelbaum recalls with a laugh. They moved on.

In the studio at Umbra’s headquarters, Rowan is in his element amid its soaring ceiling, brilliant white walls and cluttered cubicles filled with the next new thing. As vice president of the company and chief designer,
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At one end of the studio, creative lead Matt Carr is working out the details of a digital photo frame on his laptop computer. A 3 D printer is creating the prototype, using layers of plastic "string" to build up the shape. The final product will be curved and made of polished wood, a sharp departure from the usual glass and chrome finish most digital photo frame makers are supplying, Rowan says.

Applying innovative designs to standard products and seeing the potential in new technology are hallmarks of Umbra’s work. "When quartz came along it made it easy to make clocks and be very innovative in the design we could do," Rowan says of the company’s continuing series of funky wall clocks.

Rowan says Umbra draws its inspiration from many quarters: from the principals’ global travels, from their designers and from their clients.

Mandelbaum describes himself as a "synthesizer" of ideas and trends. In the mid ’80s,
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It costs money to be original and success has attracted imitators. Case in point: Umbra invested $400,000 in tooling to make the "Oh" chair, a moulded plastic chair with holes cut in the back and sides. The chair, another of Rashid’s designs,
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