Introduction: The “migratory birds” in the grid and the forgotten autumn
To be honest, before founding Meetwarm, I was just like most people in front of the screen. I was a “working migrant” who was exhausted in the office cubicles.
At that time, my world was precisely divided into cold dimensions: endless Outlook emails, endless project meetings, cold undulating lines on the KPI dashboard, and thousands of lights that didn’t belong to me flashing outside the car window when I took a taxi home late at night. We always think that if we run fast enough when we are young, we can forget about certain things. Being busy has become a high-purity anesthetic, causing me to completely forget the rotation of the four seasons, and even forget when the last time I sat at the same table with my parents and had a peaceful meal was.
Until that late autumn Saturday in 2024, as someone who had been working overtime for half a month, I finally got a rare opportunity to catch my breath. I drove aimlessly and finally wandered around, returning to my parents’ old yard in the mountains.
The door was ajar, and the room was surprisingly quiet. I changed my shoes and was about to walk towards the living room when I caught a glimpse of the glass door leading to the backyard.
Through the somewhat mottled glass, I saw my father.
Unexpected: That shaking old wooden chair, and the years stolen by time
The sunshine that afternoon was very good, with the warm orange color unique to autumn, lazily covering the ground. Father sat on the old wooden chair in the center of the yard.
That chair is too old, it can be traced back to my high school days. After decades of wind, frost, rain, and washing, the originally dark brown wood has already developed a layer of dry gray white, and many places have cracked and peeled off. A slightly discerning person can tell at a glance that its interior has been mercilessly eroded by termites and moisture, swaying in the autumn wind and making a creaking sound that makes one’s teeth ache.
My father closed his eyes and raised his head slightly, like an extremely tired sailor, greedily capturing the last warm sunlight of this late autumn. His hair has turned completely white, and his spine is no longer as straight as I remember. Watching that scene, I suddenly felt a pang of sour guilt in my heart: it turned out that in the days when I was running forward desperately, time had already folded my father into such an old appearance.
I took a deep breath and was about to push open the heavy glass door, shouting ‘Dad’ to him loudly.
However, all the tranquility and warmth were completely torn apart in a second by an extremely piercing ‘click’ sound.
The chair leg, which had long been decayed, finally reached its limit under the weight of time and broke violently without warning. In that moment, I watched helplessly as my father lost his center of gravity. He didn’t even have time to take any defensive posture before he fell heavily onto the moss covered slate with a dull loud bang.
“Dad!”
My brain went blank in an instant, my heart seemed to be tightly gripped by a pair of hands, and even my breathing froze. I pushed open the door like crazy and rushed over. I even tripped over a dead branch in the yard and crawled towards my father. When I tried to help him up, my hands trembled uncontrollably and tears welled up uncontrollably.
Awakening: The barrenness of the backyard should not be the price of home
Fortunately, by the grace of heaven, my father only scraped the skin on his arm, and his bones were unharmed. But after I sent my father, who had undergone a physical examination and had settled down to sleep, back to the empty courtyard alone.
I crouched down and picked up the broken leg of the chair. With a little force, the decaying sawdust turned into fragments in the palm of your hand. On that chilly autumn night, I looked at the fallen leaves and dry grass covering the yard, and fell into an unprecedented reflection.
This used to be the happiest place for our whole family.
When I was young, every summer, my mother would move out a small wooden table filled with watermelons that had been chilled with well water; My father would shake a fan here, pointing to the stars in the sky and telling me stories about the Cowherd and Weaver Girl; During the Mid-Autumn Festival, three generations of people sat together and fought for a five kernel moon cake or a bean paste moon cake… It was full of laughter, long talks and hot fireworks.
I don’t know when ‘busyness’ became the most grandiose excuse for all of us. We use excuses such as overtime, socializing, and striving for a better life. What about the results? Not only have we made the backyard overgrown with weeds, but even the most basic outdoor safety for our parents has become a luxury stroke of luck.
Looking at that pile of rotten wood, a strong voice struck deep in my heart:
If, I mean, if we could have a stable and comfortable outdoor dining table and chairs, would my father be able to safely enjoy the sunshine? Would our home be able to rediscover the long lost warmth of sitting together
This is no longer a simple question, it is like a Mars, completely igniting my exhausted soul. It has become a mission that I must fulfill.
Craftsmanship: Using the temperature of materials to resist the coldness of the industrial era
With this obsession, I submitted my resignation letter and officially founded Meetwarm.
I don’t want to make the cold, assembly line style steel plastic furniture that can be seen everywhere on the market. If a piece of furniture wants to enter a family’s backyard, it must understand people’s hearts and have a tactile “human touch”. In order to solve the pain points of traditional outdoor furniture being delicate, fragile, and cold, I spent almost half a year with my team in the raw material market and processing factories like a madman.
Our obsession with materials is almost paranoid:
Hand woven Rattan: Why do we insist on keeping it handmade? Because the plastic produced by the machine feels too cheap. We use improved high-density environmentally friendly PE rattan, which is hand woven by experienced craftsmen. It not only retains the tiny and uneven breathing sensation and natural touch of natural rattan weaving, but also maintains excellent breathability in the scorching summer of over thirty degrees, without sticking to sweat.
Reshaping the Cast Aluminum process: In response to the shadow of my father’s fall, I turned my attention to cast aluminum. It is a true ‘armor’. But traditional metal furniture always gives people a cold and hard sense of distance. We adjusted the mold formula and applied multiple layers of special skin friendly and UV resistant spray coating on the surface. The final result is a texture that feels as delicate and warm as silk, completely bidding farewell to the sharpness and coldness of metal. More importantly, it can withstand rainstorm and sun exposure. It has been kept in the yard for decades and remains as stable as Mount Tai.
Pioneering Deep Comfort Massage Chair: The micro arc curve of this chair was determined after consulting over a dozen ergonomic experts and revising 23 drafts. I accurately supported the backrest of the chair to every section of my spine. Because I really want those silver haired elders who have worked hard all their lives and have poor joints to feel a sense of being gently embraced when they sit down on their own terrace.
Final: Meetwarm, let the temperature of life occur in the yard
People often joke to me, ‘Vivi, you’re not selling furniture here, you’re just doing psychological counseling.’. ”
Every time I hear this, I laugh. Because in Meetwarm’s brand philosophy, “Meet a warmer life” has never been a beautiful slogan written in marketing PPTs.
For me, it is the echo of happiness hidden in every real scene:
It is a family photo sent by a customer in the customer service backend, with the following sentence: “Thank you for your table. This Mid Autumn Festival, our whole family finally gathered in the yard to have a big meal again
It’s the long-awaited determination and calmness that surges in your heart as you push open the terrace door late at night after a busy day, sink into the Meetwarm sofa chair, close your eyes, and place your palm on the warm metal armrest, listening to the wind blowing through the leaves.
We never define our own products as simple ‘garden furniture’. Marble may crack, wood may decay, but the love and memories that arise when people sit together should not be interrupted by the damage of the carrier. What we truly want to do for you is to build a spiritual sanctuary that can withstand wind and rain, laugh freely, and shelter from exhaustion.
No matter how busy life is, don’t forget to leave a corner for your family and yourself to enjoy the breeze and sun.
Welcome to the world of Meetwarm. Here, let’s push the boundaries of life a few meters further and embrace that tangible and warmer way of life.
May you be treated gently by time.
There is temperature,
Vivi
Meetwarm founder