This Australian retailer wants to ensure you're sitting comfortably

When the newly appointed CEO of King Living, David Woollcott, first started with the Australian furniture retailer last year, he admits he was puzzled by the price point for their popular range of sofas.

“I was questioning why we don’t charge more for our product,” he said. “With the Jasper (sofa), which starts from around $4000, we could charge $7000 or $8000.”

The galvanised steel-framed sofas, which come with a 25-year warranty, have a strong following in Australia where they are a popular choice for those looking for affordable style that will last. The range includes sofas and armchairs in a variety of styles designed to be flexible enough to suit any space, or lifestyle, at a price point that is deliberately accessible.

Central to the success of King Living, which started as a mother and son enterprise with David King and his mother Gwen in the 1970s, has been the decision to keep design, manufacturing and retailing under the one roof. Woollcott said it places King Living in a rare position in the market.

“We are in control, which is exciting for the consumer,” he said. “We know how our product is made and where the materials are sourced and we are acting as one entity. That instils trust.”

It also means there are no additional players looking to add further costs.

“We don’t support a third party, so the additional margin we invest in quality,” he said.

King Living has marked their time in the Australian market with the re-release of its first piece of furniture, now known as the 1977 sofa. A surprisingly contemporary-looking chair designed to be ‘built’ piece by piece to create a modular sofa of your choice to suit small or large spaces, it embodies the kind of relaxed elegance Australian design has become known for.

The 1977 King Living sofa was recently re-released. It can be mixed and matched to any configuration.

It’s a design aesthetic and business model Woollcott said has been embraced as King Living expanded into markets in Singapore and Europe in recent years with North America to follow.

“What delineates us is that we are a designer, manufacturer and retailer of furniture — that is really unique,” he said. “There are many businesses who do the retail bit and they source from factories around the world. But we are in control, which is exciting for the consumer.”

While the size of living spaces vary significantly across Europe, Asia and North America, Woollcott said there is enough variation and flexibility in the range to accommodate customers’ needs, whether it is the generous proportions of the Jasper and Kato sofas or the more compact Aura and Fleur designs. While best known for their sofas, King Living also has an extensive range of dining furniture, as well as beds, floorcoverings, lighting and storage options. Their outdoor furniture range is also gaining a strong following, taking the same approach to the design and construction of their interior furniture and translating it for outdoor spaces.

And it’s not just the Australian market taking notice.

“Australian design is globally loved because it has a casual nature to it,” he said. “It’s informal, which doesn’t mean it is less sophisticated or less detailed.

“Coming from the UK where it is all about the class structure and formality, Australia is the antithesis. It’s warm, approachable and casual.”

The King Cove reclining sun lounge is part of the popular outdoor furniture range.

Having spent the past five years in Europe as managing director of Fisher & Paykel UK & Europe, Woollcott is aware that customers are increasingly concerned about the sustainability of their products. The ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ ethos is nothing new to King Living, he said.

“What stunned me when I met (founder) David King, they have acted sustainably from day one because they have made that link with waste not being a good thing,” he said. “It’s all about resources. I don’t think there would be a business leader out there who would not see the link between preserving resources and saving money.”

King Living also offers their King Care service, a commitment to recover or completely refurbish sofas for a cost, whether they were manufactured in 1977 or 2023.

While it may seem like a lot of fuss over a sofa, Woollcott noted that this key piece of furniture is often the backdrop to family life for years.

“Memories are made on our furniture and the sofa can end up becoming a member of the family,” he said. “Our furniture is designed to last for generations — and to be reconditioned.

“They take on a personality of their own.”

Even in Hollywood, pre-eminent in the field of chutzpah, greatness can be intimidating. Rarely does one hear producers discuss their plans to remake “Casablanca” or “Lawrence of Arabia.” It took Disney many years of creating live-action remakes of its classic animated features before it worked up the nerve to take another whack at its first, and perhaps most venerated, work, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which in 1937 set the template for richly evocative animation that could appeal to all ages. It is still, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the 10th-highest-grossing movie ever released in North America.

Disney’s first “Snow White” isn’t perfect—the prince is badly underwritten and doesn’t even get a name—but it is, by turns, enchanting, scary and moving. Version 2.0, starring Rachel Zegler in the title role and Gal Gadot as her nefarious stepmother, has been in the works since 2016 and already feels like it’s from a bygone era. After fans seemed grumpy about the rumored storyline and the casting of Ms. Zegler, Disney became bashful about releasing it last March and ordered reshoots to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, the story is so dopey it made me sleepy.

Directed by Marc Webb (“The Amazing Spider-Man” with Andrew Garfield ), the remake is neither a clever reimagining (like “The Jungle Book” and “Pete’s Dragon,” both from 2016) nor a faithful retelling (like 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast”), but rather an ungainly attempt at modernization. The songs “I’m Wishing” and “Someday My Prince Will Come” have been cut; the big what-she-wants number near the outset is called “Waiting on a Wish.” Instead of longing for true love (=fairy tale), Snow White hopes to sharpen her leadership skills (=M.B.A. program). And she keeps talking about a more equitable distribution of wealth in the kingdom she is destined to rule after her mother, the queen, dies and her father, having made a questionable choice for his second spouse, goes missing.

Ms. Gadot, giving it her all, is serviceable as the wicked stepmother. But she doesn’t bring a lot of wit to the role, and the script, by Erin Cressida Wilson , does very little to help. Her hello-I’m-evil number, “All Is Fair,” is meant to be the film’s comic showstopper but it’s barely a showslower, a wan imitation of “Gaston” from “Beauty and the Beast” or “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from “The Little Mermaid.” The original songs, from the songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“La La Land”), also stack up poorly against the three tunes carried over from the original “Snow White,” each of which has been changed from a sweet bonbon into high-energy, low-impact cruise-ship entertainment. So unimaginative is the staging of the numbers that it suggests such straight-to-Disney+ features as 2019’s “Lady and the Tramp.”

After escaping a plot to kill her, Snow White becomes friends with a digital panoply of woodland animals and with the Seven Dwarfs, who instead of being played by actors are also digital creations. The warmth of the original animation is totally absent here; the tiny miners look like slightly creepy garden gnomes, except for Dopey, who looks like Alfred E. Neuman . As for the prince, there isn’t one; the love interest, Jonathan (a forgettable Andrew Burnap ), is a direct lift of the rogue-thief Flynn Rider , from 2010’s “Tangled,” plus some Robin Hood stylings. His sour, sarcastic tribute to the heroine, “Princess Problems,” is the worst Snow White number since the one with Rob Lowe at the 1989 Oscars.

Ms. Zegler isn’t the chief problem with the movie, but as in her debut role, Maria in Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” she has a tendency to seem bland and blank, leaving the emotional depths of her character unexplored even as she nearly dies twice. Gloss prevails over heart in nearly every scene, and plot beats feel contrived. She and Jonathan seem to have no interest in one another until, suddenly, they do; and when he and his band of thieves escape from a dungeon, they do so simply by yanking their iron chains out of the walls. Everything comes too easily and nothing generates much feeling. When interrogated by the evil queen, who wants to know what happened to her stepdaughter, Jonathan replies, “Snow who?” Which would be an understandable reaction to the movie. “Snow White” is the fairest of them all, in the sense that fair can mean mediocre.

This Australian retailer wants to ensure you’re sitting comfortably

Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot star in an awkward live-action attempt to modernize the 1937 animated classic.