— Furniture Today,
NEW YORK — Furniture designer and retailer Sergio Savarese and marketer and retailer Ivan Luini died Friday


when the small plane they were flying crashed near the Colorado-Wyoming border.

Savarese, 48, and Luini, 46, were close friends and fellow pilots who were on a business trip to visit stores, according to news reports.

Savarese was a designer of contemporary furniture who in 1988 with his wife, Monique, founded Dialogica, a retailer that now has stores in New York and Los Angeles and distributors in other cities.

He is survived by his wife, two sons, mother, sister and brother.

Luini, a promoter of high-fashion plastic furniture, was founder and president of New York-based Kartell U.S. Inc., which has stores in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles and is represented by more than 150 U.S. distributors and retailers.

From 1986 to 1990 he was vice president of overseas sales for furniture supplier B&B Italia. He moved to New York in 1990 and established I.L. Euro, introducing European designers to the U.S. market. In 1994 he founded lighting company Luceplan USA, where he was executive vice president until 1999.