Arun Maheswaran is excited. This past September, he displayed his Octoport outdoor yacht furniture for the first time at the Monaco Yacht Show, advancing the dream he’s been working to achieve since he started the company in 2017. From his showroom near the Lürssen shipyard in Bremen, Germany, he brought chairs like the one above, which is part of his new Oyoso collection. He also displayed folding chairs that can be taken to the beach, and bar stools from his bespoke collection—all of it lightweight and in styles and colors possible to create because of Octoport’s carbon-fiber construction.
“The feedback was really, really good,” he says. “A lot of owners and owners’ reps, also designers, they said it was the first time they were seeing furniture like that.”
The way the seat appears to float above the base is a signature element of his designs. Each piece is painted similar to the way a carbon-fiber yacht hull is painted, with hundreds of available colors (as well as custom ones). “This kind of design will not work with teak or steel,” he says. “It would be really heavy, or there would be joint creaks after some years.”
All the crew needs to do is clean the furniture the same way they clean a carbon-fiber hull, and it should last for 10 to 20 years, he says. The carbon-fiber material helps to keep the yacht’s weight down, and allows styles like the folding chairs to be more compact for stowing and transporting in a tender that’s headed off to the beach.
Yacht owners are starting to place large orders, Maheswaran says, with one refit happening in Greece that will include a substantial amount of Octoport furniture on board. An American owner bought several of the folding chairs at the Monaco show, at a price point of at least $5,400 apiece.
Pricing is made to order, like the furniture itself, with fabric and color selections affecting the final tally. Quantity also matters, he says: “We can go cheaper if the owner wants 20 of these chairs.”
Maheswaran adds that he is delighted to see yacht owners and designers opening their minds to the possibilities: “I want to bring this freshness to the industry.”
