Dominique, Francia Biography
Dominique Imbert, the founder of the Focus fireplace company, was born in 1940 in Montpellier, southern France. After earning degrees in literature in London and Paris, he embarked on a "casual" career, as he puts it, becoming an ethnologist in Alaska and an assistant chef in Manhattan. He subsequently obtained a doctorate in sociology from the Sorbonne and served as a literature professor in a high school in Paris. After four years of teaching, he decided that he preferred to create works in metal rather than "mold young minds", and in 1967 he founded a steel sculpture workshop in the village of Viols-le-Fort, north of Montpellier. It was in this studio that he designed his first fireplace for personal use. He subsequently repeated the exercise for other people who became passionate about what he had created, thus starting the Focus adventure. This self-taught sculptor-designer deftly pursues his many passions, creating sculptures in bronze and steel, as well as fireplaces and furniture. What all his creations have in common is the insistence on quality, which represents a quest shared by the exceptional team who works with him, in order to achieve the quality standards he requires. Focus directly manages the production and distribution of all its products, and, faced with the option of outsourcing production, has chosen to support the local production sites of its fireplaces.
