HELSINKI: Attend a dinner party at a Finnish home, and your fine cocktail might just come in a glass with a little red sticker on it.

Your first inclination - to quietly peel it off before the hosts notice what surely must be an accident - would in fact be social death.

The sticker, which has a white letter "i" in the middle, is a status symbol.

You're drinking out of an Iittala glass, and that means your new Finnish friends have pulled out their very best to serve you.

Iittalas glassware has long adorned the tables of Finnish homes, and now the designer is hoping to cash in on the current craze for all things Scandinavian.

"Our design philosophy is based on Scandinavian values," said Tuija Aalto-Setala, Iittalas communications manager. "We appreciate aesthetic values, but we also want to produce designs with staying power."

Indeed one reason the company is so incredibly popular in Finland is the durability of its products. With a tradition stretching back to the 1800s, it's not uncommon for Iittalas glassware to be passed on from generation to generation of a family.

The Iittala group actually consists of seven different product lines, each with a different name, sold in the companies' three home markets: Finland, Sweden and Norway.

But in 2002 the company made a strategic decision to combine all its offerings for the international market - from pots and pans to designer table settings, from knives to champagne glasses - under the Iittala brand.

"We know that building an international consumer brand is very time consuming, and expensive as well," Aalto-Setala said, in explaining the tactic.

Last year, Iittala also began a new effort to put more emphasis on the retail end of its sales. The company opened several of its own shops, and has launched "stores-within-a-store" at larger retailers.

As part of this branding shift, Iittala has at the same time rolled out new products designed for a changing marketplace - where cooking is increasingly becoming a hobby.

A thick and sturdy cookware line called the "Tools Collection" is meant to attract the male consumer. Fanciful dishes with no-spill lips are just for the kids. And there's a new twist on an old favourite, the classic Alvar Aalto vase has gone mini for candy and other snacks. (Alvar Aalto, Finland's most renowned architect, designed the original in 1936.)

"We can change the rules of this business. And by changing the rules, we can increase sales and demand," Aalto- Setala said.

The company credits this strategy for a 13 per cent increase in sales last year in the Iittala brand. What's more, 56 per cent of the companies' overall sales last year came from outside Finland, an increase of 3 per cent over figures for the previous year.

Iittala has also managed to cash in on the resurgent popularity of the Finnish textile design firm Marimekko.

The two have teamed up, taking a classic Marimekko pattern and launching a new line called "Primavera." The bright floral prints now adorn everything from cups to clothes to curtains.

Award-winning Finnish designer, Heikki Orvola, who has been dreaming up his artworks for nearly four decades, created one of the Iittala-Marimekko collaboration's biggest sellers.

It's a rounded, clear glass candleholder for tea lights, manufactured by Iittala and sold in Marimekko stores.

"Simplicity is built into the Finnish mentality," Orvola said of his design's streamlined, functional shape. Like other Iittala products, his candles come with the trademark red sticker. If you want to do it like the Finns, you'll leave it right where it is.

(China Daily 05/29/2004 page10)