The direction was in the work. It had not been written down yet.
Years turning plastic waste into purpose
Sessions to build a studio that leads on its own terms
Sentence, the North Star, that unlocks every other decision
Panos Sakkas and Foteini Setaki built one of the most credible circular production studios in Europe. For ten years The New Raw has turned plastic waste into public furniture, designed, engineered and 3D printed in Rotterdam. The work was recognised internationally, the fabrication logic was original and the leads were real. What was missing was one sentence stating where the studio was going. Without it, every lead felt equally urgent, every opportunity competed with every other, and each decision took the same effort as the last. The work was the argument. The argument had not yet been made.
3D-printed public furniture from recycled material: designed, engineered, fabricated.
If a city planning a large public development called tomorrow and asked what you stand for,
what would you say?
Four categories: dream client, strategic experiment, tactical engagement, distraction. Every active lead gets placed.
Leads in the same category get the same level of energy. The rest get a decision, and the time goes back to the studio.
Too many fronts, no shared reason why.
The studio was running on too many fronts at once. Several strong opportunities had come in because they recognised the studio's credibility. Others had verbal agreements and nothing concrete. Very different situations were handled with the same urgency, so none of them got the attention it deserved.
From furniture shop to fabrication studio.
The site led with generic furniture language and kept the engineering out of sight. Five pages were rewritten with Engineer, line by line.
The opening became “Plastic waste, transformed into durable furniture.” The geography became “Made locally. Placed worldwide.” The new site went live in May 2026, written for business clients.
Write the sentence, then sort the leads.
Session by session: write the North Star, classify the six leads, and prepare Torino as a network moment, with conversations arranged before arrival. Between sessions, Engineer in the Operator System does the analysis once the briefing per lead is in. The founders stop running in circles and start moving in one direction.
The strongest leads on top.
For the first time the strongest leads sit at the top of the stack. In its tenth year the studio was shortlisted for the Dezeen Awards with Buoy.
The first clear positioning statement is being written for a conversation, the way a city would hear it: circular production at scale, from Rotterdam to real public impact. That sentence changes every meeting that comes after it.
in what we're doing, the impact clients belong at the top.”
and tells us what to do today.”
