AICO celebrating 25 years

Heath E. Combs -- Furniture Today, January 29, 2013

LAS VEGAS - For Michael Amini, formative years in Europe helped cultivate a lifelong appreciation for design that's evident at AICO/Amini Innovation Corp.
But AICO - which this year is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding by Amini - didn't start out as an expression of love for European design.

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Today, Amini runs an international company and also focuses on product design.Now known for original designs and showrooms that promise an elegant, sometimes ornate touch, it took years for the AICO that customers recognize today to emerge.
In his late teens, in 1976, Amini began trekking from Iran to travel Europe, fortunate to have enough savings and family support to "find out for myself what the world was about."
He traveled extensively in Turkey, Belgium, Italy, France, Britain, Greece, Luxembourg and elsewhere, falling under the spell of Old World architecture at places like Versailles and Kensington Palace. The fashion-centric worlds of Milan and Rome awakened a love of design.
Amini recalls Europe as a living museum, helping to cultivate an appreciation of design in architecture, clothing and furniture design that transformed his life.
"You see some of the furniture sitting in those palaces, and it touches you. I remember thinking as a young man, I wish I could live in this palace with this architecture and these paintings," Amini said.
"The countries like France, England Germany, they all talk to you. Especially if you're young and you're walking all day everywhere with a low budget."