“Aplat Culinary Design Collection. Thoughtful zero-waste designs for sharing food and wine. Aplat products are simple, functional, zero-waste in design and manufactured in San Francisco. Aplat products are designed to care for food while caring for the planet, changing the way we live at home and changing the way our industry manufactures. From farm to fiber to factory to table.” – Shujan Bertrand

How and why did you start?

My background is in Industrial Design, 25 years of advance product development, design research and strategy. I’ve worked in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milan, Munich, and Seoul. Most of my career was in lifestyle consumer products such as bags for apple and nike. I designed furniture for Steelcase and Herman Miller.

Aplat was Inspired by the intersection of my family life here in San Francisco and our life in France. I created the Aplat Design Collection in homage to our life which involves daily rituals of sharing homemade food and wine with family and friends. Combined with my career as an industrial designer in Silicon Valley for over 20 years, and a strong passion for improving people's lives and the planet.

The initial idea:

It started with a plastic cellophane wrapped bouquet of flowers from a local San Francisco neighborhood store. You could say that the bouquet literally hit me over the head with an idea! At that moment in the store I had the insight to create the first sustainable and reusable garden tote for flowers. The first thing I did that night was research patents for the designs I had in mind. With my experience in soft goods product development, I was able to design and sew the entire four category collection of totes in less than a few days.

At the time I was in my third year of corporate design strategy and research, and was traveling from coast to coast and had very little time, while also raising two young children. But I was so inspired by the idea of a culinary tote collection that I stayed up late at night and on weekends, took evening classes on manufacturing, and used my lunch breaks to visit local factories and suppliers for raw material. I was lucky that everything I needed to start the business was within an hours drive, getting back home to pick up the kids from school and daycare.

When I shared the collection with my dear friend Cathy Bailey at Heath Ceramics, she immediately gave me my first Purchase Order for the Plat Culinary Tote. After two months of sales at Heath, I couldn’t keep up both my corporate job and Aplat, so I decided to leave corporate and give Aplat my full attention. That was almost 5 years ago and I’m still excited every morning when I wake up.

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Give us three words that embody your brand essence:

Care. Share. Gather.

Whenever we have conversations with old friends or new customers, we notice that Aplat becomes a vehicle to share stories about food and gathering. There’s something really special for us about bringing friends and family together - you just need to bring something good with you.

A song to describe your collection:

Any song by Garth Stevenson: Flying, Voyage, Journey

Tell us a little about your product origins / manufacturing processes, and your favorite part

We manufacture locally in San Francisco, California, where we can be involved with our factories and design process. Throughout our manufacturing production, all our products are made with zero waste. We utilize origami principles to build volume through folds. Origami design practice deepens our understanding and strategy for zero waste design and manufacturing. We believe this design approach can help reduce pre-consumer textile waste on the planet, and inspire people to reduce the use of non-renewable plastic and elastic in their kitchen.

Because we honor our zero-waste practices in our daily work, we also want to make products for others to do the same. We hope to grow awareness for responsible design, and create new partnerships with sustainable companies & organizations who align with our mission.

Please share five things inspiring or influencing your design/creative process right now:

Origami + Pleats
Issey Miyake
New Collaborations with Fashion Designers
Fiber Artists
Circular Design Process

Design (Impact) heroes?

Hero 1. I look up to Yvonne Chouinard of Patagonia and his book Let My People Go Surfing.
Hero 2. Issey Miyake for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances.
Shero 3. My celebrity role model is Michelle Obama for her strength and wisdom as a woman and mother. "We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own 'to do' list."
Shero 4. I’m also inspired by Alice Waters because she brought real change to our communities around food, farms and edible gardens. I feel her ideas were revolutionary and purposeful to human values and human connections. I feel the same way with Aplat. We hope to bring meaning to our daily practice and taking responsibilities and sharing our zero waste design journey.

What’s on the horizon for this year? Any products or colors we should be on the lookout for?

When I started the company in 2015, I developed a 5 year product roadmap with zero waste design and manufacturing solutions for everyday food and wine carriers, bread/produce storage, chef accessories, and garden inspired totes. With my background in Industrial Design, I enjoy partnering with brands or industry professionals to design products with patent pending solutions. I can’t wait to share them all with you soon!