Fractal Design presents the North case with a wooden front

Now I see that in the top frame of Fractal a series of rods of, shall we say, 5×8 mm have been used. The amount of wood needed is very small. Let’s figure out the cost price: I’m a furniture maker (self-employed), and my supplier currently charges €1600 per m³ for oak and €3600 for hickory. The design contains 10 slats of approximately 400x5x8 mm. That is 160,000 mm³ or 0.00016 m³. When working with wood, you can simply count on a “loss” (conversion to chips) of 50% for such small staves, so in effect 0.00032 m³ per cabinet is required. The cost price of wood is therefore €0.51 for oak and €1.15 for walnut. VAT excluded, yes

With those slats, Fractal also solves the problems with woodworking: It can shrink and expand freely. This was not possible with InWin’s design. Because the slats are so thin and narrow, the warping won’t be visible to the naked eye. The only problem that is still possible in theory is that it will twist. Then there’s a slight twist. This rarely happens with properly dried and planed wood.

As a furniture maker I would dare to sell this design and expect the cost price to go up by ten pounds max due to the wooden front. In the meantime you steal the show and can add 30-50 euros to your consumer price.