Maryboro Lodge Personality: Ingvar Skoog
As a boy, Ingvar Skoog was always interested in furniture, designing his first stool when he was fourteen. He would make a career out of creating simple, functional pine furniture in a Scandinavian style. He started out in Slatte, Sweden, with a factory named Slatte Mobler (mobler=furniture). By the 1960s, he was operating SwedFurn in Toreboda. This 25,000 square metre factory was making 300 swivel chairs and 65 upholstered sofas per day that sold in Sweden, Norway, Great Britain and North America.
Ingvar’s former salesman, Jan Fenelius, moved to North America and contacted his old employer about setting up a factory in Canada. Ingvar was interested and, in 1974, purchased Fenelon Falls’ former Allen Wood Products factory. At first, this factory was a distribution centre for products made in Sweden. His furniture was very fashionable in this era, selling through retailers like Sears, Simpsons, Hudson’s Bay, Mobilia, Nordic Craft, Scandinavian Design, Eaton’s, Idomo and Ikea. Typically, the furniture did not have markings to identify it as SwedFurn, Fenelon Falls, but it was commonly featured in the catalogues of these national retailers. The old cement block factory near the shore of Cameron Lake was painted blue and yellow, like the Swedish flag, reopening in January 1975. The Swedish factory closed in the 1980s.
Some of the former Allen Wood Products employees returned to work for the new company. In contrast to the strict regimen of years past, Ingvar and Maud were remembered for their warmth and for making their agreements with a handshake. Jan once again travelled as a salesman. Maud visited upholstery factories in Toronto to select fabrics. In the 1980s, the business grew closer to Fenelon Falls’ other furniture factory, Rosedale Furniture, which Jan briefly owned. The Skoogs sold their business to Folke and Bjorn Alfredsson (Rosedale Furniture) in 1984. Six years later, when Rosedale Furniture ran into financial difficulties, the Skoogs reacquired the old Allen Wood Products factory.
Ingvar and Maude named their new company Swed Design, which also had a retail component—SwedFurn had been wholesale. Ingvar passed away in 1999, then Maud carried on the business with her sons Chris and Daniel. But things were not the same without Ingvar’s interest in designing furniture. By the beginning of the new millennium, fashions had changed, and the company faced competition from factories overseas, where the cost of labour was lower. The factory closed, then burned in 2001. Though the factory is now the site of a condominium, SwedFurn’s cottage furniture has a lasting appeal to it. Many local residents still appreciate what SwedFurn created.
