Helinox: the camping chairs from South Korea

You have to trust. Trust that the Helinox camping chair will hold your weight. Without creaking or groaning, without wobbling or buckling. ‘Sitting means trusting,’ says employee Taehun Jensen Kim, laughing. He had to overcome this himself when he tested the first prototype. ‘The chair looked so fragile. It didn’t look like it could hold the weight of an adult.’ But it did, and continues to do so today. It weighs less than a kilogram and can hold 145 kilograms. The ‘Chair One’ is perfectly balanced, packable and light. This is what makes it an iconic Helinox product.

Taehun has been part of the brand since day one, which has achieved cult status in the camping scene over the last 16 years. He welcomes us to the Helinox Creative Center, the flagship store in the heart of Seoul, a cosmopolitan city with over 20 million people in the metropolitan area. Seoul is a metropolis that pulsates and lives; it is urban and fast. But Seoul is also a city built on mountains and surrounded by national parks. The roads here are as steep as the urge to get out into nature is great. We have been travelling in South Korea for two weeks and have experienced from west to east how deeply the connection to nature is anchored here.

At the end of our journey, we take the opportunity to visit Helinox. The brick building on Highway 1 perfectly reflects this special mix of street culture and outdoor fanaticism. Taehun – who has long hair and big earrings – strokes his beard and nods: ‘We’re always on the lookout for something new, something unique, in both design and technology.’ And they’ve been doing that much longer than Helinox has ever existed. The furniture brand’s innovative spirit is a legacy.

The beginnings of Helinox

Jake Lah and his son Young founded Helinox in 2009. Jake had already established his first company – and with it revolutionised the tent market. Jake is an inventor who has entrepreneurship and a love for the outdoors in his DNA. His mother co-founded the South Korean Girl Scout Association. He studied history and business administration when a completely different subject caught his attention: aluminium. He developed a special, new anodising process, found new connections and constructions, made aluminium poles more stable, thinner and lighter – and thus became the godfather of modern tent architecture.

With his company DAC, founded in 1988, Jake remains an essential partner to the leading tent manufacturers – not only as a supplier, but also as a developer and designer. His biggest customer, however, is now his son with Helinox. It’s a story you have to start from the beginning. Right from the very beginning. It is no coincidence that there is an observatory at the DAC site in Seoul …

‘The name was actually meant for a different project,’ Taehun explains. ‘Jake was working on a telescope and the name connects the god of the sun, Helios, with Nox, the goddess of night.’ Young designed the logo and worked together on solutions – but the celestial project soon found its grounding in telescopic sticks. And Young – ‘a single creative force,’ as Taehun says – found his playing field.

Camping chair by Helinox: the idea

A few years later, Young turned the camping furniture industry upside down, just like his father did with the tents. ‘The chairs on the market were uncomfortable, unwieldy and heavy,’ Taehun recalls. ‘We wanted to create furniture that the world had never seen before. It should fit in small cars, and you should be able to take it anywhere with you.’ He grabs a ‘Chair One’ and lifts it up in the air. ‘There was no such thing to begin with. We had to completely rethink everything. The construction, the material, the style.’

But the basis for the Helinox products are the DAC aluminium poles, right? Taehun nods: ‘Everyone thinks the secret lies in the poles. That’s true, of course. But only partially. It’s also a question of how to use them, where – and with what.’ He asks us to look closely. ‘Look, the seams, the layers of fabric, it’s like a lasagne. The secret is this recipe and all its components.’

The lightest camping chair in the world

The Helinox ‘Chair One’ camping chair was soon joined by a table. ‘It was less complicated – but it was so light that the wind blew it away.’ A bigger challenge was the loungers, as Taehun points out. The difficulty here was to maintain the tension and prevent sagging. This meant inventing more new technologies, fine-tuning the construction and finding the optimal lasagne recipe.

The ‘Chair One’ now comes in a wide range of variants with different accessories, such as the lined cover and sun protection. There’s the Helinox Ground Chair and the Sunset model – and there’s the Chair Zero, the lightest camping chair in the world. ‘We saw people climbing the mountain with our ‘Chair One’ strapped to their rucksack,’ says Taehun. ‘We couldn’t understand it at all, but they said: It weighs nothing. So we thought: It has to be even lighter.’ They saved almost 500 grams with the Helinox ‘Zero’ chair…

Further development at Helinox

And there’s another thing that still needs to be done: Jake and Young have been working on the environmental optimisation of their products for decades. All the poles are recyclable, and Jake invented a mechanical ‘green anodising’ process that not only saved chemicals, but also a lot of water and CO₂. Introducing the new Helinox camping chair ‘Chair One (re)’: even more comfortable, more sophisticated and made from 100% recycled polyester and a frame that uses 30% less material thanks to a new manufacturing process.

But the most sustainable product is the one that lasts a long time. Taehun is also aware of this – and this brings him to one of his favourite phases of product development: the endurance test. To demonstrate, he jumps on, pulls and tears at his ‘Chair One’. ‘Our mission is: try to destroy it!’ he says with a grin. ‘It all starts with the human test. Comfort, balance, robustness. And then it’s time to take it to the machines, and we’ll see what happens, see what 400 kilograms of iron can do to the Helinox chair made of fabric, stitches and aluminium.’ Only once it has proved itself against humans and machines will the piece of furniture hit the camping market.