Champagne on arrival, house music filling the room, tasty canapes and a showroom full of Australian-designed and made outdoor furniture, surrounded by some of Brisbane’s most creative minds. Tait’s new Brisbane showroom opening felt less like a traditional launch and more like a gathering of people who genuinely care about how we live, design and create.
Located on Arthur Street, just moments from James Street, the evening brought together local interior designers, architects, artists and creatives to celebrate Tait’s next chapter in Queensland.
Tait is no newcomer to the Australian design scene. Founded in Melbourne in 1992, the family-owned furniture brand has since established showrooms in Melbourne and Sydney, with Brisbane becoming its latest home. After three years in the Queensland market, the brand has now expanded its Brisbane showroom to almost three times the size of its original space, reflecting the growing demand from Queensland’s residential, hospitality, multi-residential and commercial design community.
Stepping inside, it was immediately clear that this was more than somewhere to browse furniture. High ceilings, concrete floors and natural light gave the collections room to breathe, while complete settings were styled throughout the space with plants and accessories. A dedicated sample area allows visitors to explore Tait’s colours, finishes and textures in person, bringing the full Tait experience to Queensland.
The Collection That Stopped Us
Tait’s latest collection, ‘Swing’, was one of the first things to catch our attention.
Designed by Australian designer Adam Goodrum, the collection takes a continuous stainless-steel tube and flows it around each piece in one uninterrupted line. There is something playful about the silhouette, yet the material and finish give it a distinctly refined quality. Drawing inspiration from the 1970s, Swing feels nostalgic without looking like it belongs to another era.
Stainless steel and chrome have a way of never going out of style. The Swing Collection pairs their industrial edge with a softer, more refined feel, creating pieces that bring a sense of effortless cool to any space.
It Started With a Gap
While Brisbane may be Tait’s newest showroom location, its story began more than three decades ago in Melbourne.
In 1992, Gordon and Susan Tait identified a gap in the market for robust, well-designed outdoor furniture that could withstand Australia’s harsh climate. They set about designing and making collections that were durable, locally made and timeless. Those principles remain at the heart of Tait today.
Gordon is a sheet-metal worker by trade, with decades of hands-on experience making everything from aluminium boats to pharmaceutical and UV-printing equipment. That practical background led him to experiment with metal furniture and ultimately to the founding of Tait.
Susan, a textile designer, joined the business early on, taking responsibility for the creative direction of the collections, the Tait brand and its showroom experiences. She is also a painter, with a deep connection to the Australian landscape that has become an important part of Tait’s identity.
Together, their skill sets formed the foundation of the business, alongside a shared love of the outdoors. The pair are regular hikers, gardeners and campers, making the idea behind Tait feel less like a marketing line and more like an extension of how they actually live.
That original gap in the market has since grown into a nationally established Australian furniture brand, with showrooms across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
The Australian Way of Living
There is something slightly wild about the fact that outdoor furniture was ever considered a gap in the Australian market.
We are a country that lives outside.
Long lunches stretch into afternoons. Poolside becomes the place everyone gathers. Balconies become morning coffee spots. Rooftops become restaurants, bars and late-night meeting places. Gardens become extensions of our living rooms.
The Australian lifestyle has always had a strong connection to the outdoors, but Tait believes our relationship with these spaces is evolving. Outdoor areas are increasingly being treated as important parts of the home rather than somewhere furniture simply gets placed when the weather is nice.
Queensland perhaps takes that idea further than most.
Tait describes Queenslanders as leaders when it comes to A Life Outside, with sunlounges, dining settings and stools naturally finding a home in the state’s pool decks, gardens, balconies and rooftops. The climate does, however, ask more of the furniture. Harsh sun, UV and humidity all influence the materials, finishes and colours Tait selects for its Queensland offering.
The new Brisbane showroom reflects that understanding.
It isn’t simply an Australian brand opening another showroom in another city. It is Tait responding to a particular place and the way people here live.
Made Here, Made to Last
For all of Tait’s growth, there is something reassuringly unchanged about the way its furniture is made.
Almost everything is designed and manufactured under one roof at the brand’s Melbourne headquarters. Every piece is made to order, giving Tait control over the entire making process, from design through to manufacturing and finishing.
That proximity matters to Gordon and Susan.
It allows the team to work closely with its expert craftspeople while continuing to develop new manufacturing techniques and maintain control over quality. It also means Tait can take responsibility for what happens to its manufacturing offcuts, working with recycling partners to give those unavoidable offcuts a renewed life.
Longevity sits at the centre of the philosophy.
Tait designs its collections to be loved, looked after and passed down rather than ending up on the kerbside. Durable metals, high-performance foams and textiles and sustainable timbers are selected specifically for outdoor environments, while refurbishment is considered as part of the design process from the beginning.
There is a certain logic to it.
Outdoor furniture has to work harder than indoor furniture. It has to deal with weather, sunlight, movement and constant use, yet Tait doesn’t see those constraints as a reason to compromise on beauty.
Quite the opposite.
As the brand puts it, constraint inspires creativity. The challenge has become finding ways to make hard-working materials, particularly metals, feel elegant and refined.
Beyond the Backyard
The expansion into Brisbane also speaks to how much the role of outdoor furniture has changed.
Tait is seeing strong growth across Queensland’s multi-residential, hospitality and commercial sectors, where outdoor spaces are increasingly part of the architecture and experience of a project. Its contract-grade collections are designed for high-traffic environments, while customisations and specialised fixings can be specified for rooftops and high-wind locations.
The brand’s offering extends beyond seating and dining, too.
Its collection of commercial planters brings the same design-led approach into landscaping and architectural spaces, creating pieces that work alongside buildings, planting and the furniture within them.
It feels particularly relevant in Brisbane, where the boundaries between indoors and outdoors can be wonderfully blurred.
A restaurant terrace, a rooftop, a hotel courtyard, a residential balcony or a landscaped commercial space all become part of the experience. Furniture isn’t simply placed into these environments. It helps define how people move through them, gather in them and ultimately use them.
Tait’s new showroom gives the design community a chance to explore that idea in person, with complete settings, material samples and the full breadth of its collections now on display in Brisbane.
A Showroom for the Next Chapter
Back to the opening, a projector casts footage across the showroom, revealing the people and processes behind each piece. Canapés move through the space, champagne is topped up, and conversations flow from architecture and interiors to Dolly Parton, art and furniture.
Gordon and Susan are at the centre, meeting the community they’ve spent three years getting to know, sharing Tait’s story and hearing where Queensland’s design industry is heading.
More than 30 years after identifying a gap in the market, they’ve built a business spanning three Australian cities without losing sight of the original idea: beautiful, durable Australian outdoor furniture, built to last.
The Brisbane showroom is the latest expression of that idea, made for a Queensland audience that understands better than most that life doesn’t always happen inside.
Tait calls it A Life Outside. In this showroom, it feels less like a tagline and more like a pretty accurate description of how we want to live.
Written by Bailey Doyle.
