Presenting our inaugural list of the industry’s most inventive and resourceful talents. Get to know Rene Adda of Lexon.

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There are people who worship at the altar of good design, and then there are the French, specifically Parisians, who are so aesthetically advanced, they make the rest of us seem downright pedestrian.

Rene Adda, the Frenchman who founded Paris-based Lexon in 1991, is the aficionado of elegantly curved lines and smooth-as-silk matte finishes. In his supplier company, which dominates the European promo market and, just recently, opened an American outpost in Sacramento run by Adda’s 26-year-old U.S.-born son, Taylor, he presides over a team of celebrity designers who create and curate 40 to 50 new travel, lifestyle and desk accessory items each year.

And with that kind of attention to detail and focus on the aesthetic, his products are pricier, but as consumers have embraced quality, higher-end design, Adda is seeing his long vision beginning to pay off. “The initial idea was to create a difference in the products, bringing the designers’ imagination and sense together – like being a Christmas tree in the middle of the forest,” Adda says. “Design gives an indefinable feeling, and attraction. The best design is composed of simple but smart function, a sense of proportions, curves, colors and unicity. The total creates the magic of design.”

Lest you think Adda is all style with no hard substance, we invite you to consider that Lexon’s Tykho rubber radio, imagined by star French designer Marc Berthier, was selected for permanent display in New York’s MoMA and, oh yes, as the cover image of Time magazine’s article on Best Designed Products of the 20th Century.

“This radio was designed 22 years ago, received many design awards, and was selected by three major modern art museums in the world for their permanent collection, in addition to being on the cover of Time,” Adda says. “Having upgraded its technology, the Tykho radio has become a timeless icon, which is the goal for any design creation.”