Milan 2015: French design brand Moustache has created a video displaying its latest collection rather than shipping all of the products to Milan design week (+ movie).

Moustache decided to forgo the financial burden of exhibiting in Milan next week and has instead created a short film showing its new products.

"Milan has always been a really good fair to launch new products and to communicate but a really disappointing fair when, back home, you look back on the week with a business eye and have to consider that you lost a lot of money," Moustache co-founder Stéphane Arriubergé told Dezeen.

Moustache launched in Milan in 2009 with a range of products by designers including Inga Sempé, Big-Game and Matali Crasset. Last year the brand created a "breathing" installation at Spazio Rossana Orlandi to celebrate its fifth anniversary.

But this year, Arriubergé and partner Massimiliano Iorio decided on a more economical and sustainable solution for presenting their latest range, which includes pieces by Raw Edges, Bertjan Pot and Scholten & Baijings.

"We could have gone to Milan one more time but decided to consider alternative solutions which could be at least as efficient as renting a booth in terms of communication and less expensive in term of energy and money," added Arriubergé.

The brand commissioned photographers Charles Negre and Lee Wei Swee to create the film titled Mode d'Emploi. Set in a "strange" purple environment, dancers painted to match the background assemble the furniture and homeware pieces.

"This film and the fact that we decided to replace a booth in Milan with it can be also regarded as a reaction against the crazy design world we have to live in," said Arriubergé.

He thinks that the scale of Milan's design week is detrimental to small brands exhibiting there, and that companies like his are better off debuting and exhibiting products at smaller fairs such as Maison&Objet in Paris, Stockholm Furniture Fair and Tokyo Designers Week.

"A lot of small companies like Moustache that work very well at other fairs – Paris, Stockholm, Kortrijk, Tokyo, Cologne – feel trapped with Milan and still exhibit there knowing in advance that the business will be disappointing," Arriubergé said. "It's probably time to reshuffle the cards."

Moustache is still hoping to present the film in Milan, but has not yet found a venue or set a date for the screening.

The brand's announcement has come after Lucas Verweij's Opinion column, in which he discusses if design weeks are in danger of losing sight of their purpose – becoming more of a stage for corporate brands and less of a platform for smaller brands and emerging designers.