It’s not long now. On December 7 the world dives into the media tide of COP15 in Copenhagen, as global leaders wrestle and weigh-up growth versus sustainability.

For us here at ADU it’s an ongoing preoccupation – considering the many roles that design and creativity can take in shaping the future. With such a vast, technology-induced issue looming before us, it’s not surprising that the mainstream expects the key climate solutions to be technological ones. However let’s not overlook how much social issues and behaviors will define the future.

Alongside new technology we need new social solutions. We may even rediscover that some ‘old’ systems can be upgraded for tomorrow – Slow Food for example, and the resurgence of the handmade through grassroots ‘cottage industry’ networks. So where does that all leave designers?

Designers are uniquely trained to assess and respond to complex problems focused on the needs of the end user. Traditionally designers react by applying new knowledge and technology to the design of better products and places. Noble as that might be, can we really buy and build ourselves out of the mess we’re in?

If new social systems, which enable behavioral change, are as important as new technologies for tomorrow, designers should think quickly about applying design thinking in this direction. What is rapidly emerging is other less mainstream (did we say corporate?) paths worth exploring, some just as lucrative as those defining future technologies.

Exploring the theme of creative entrepreneurship is the focus of ADU. In this issue we focus on the role of design in social innovation, commencing a series of features that explore ideas and actions within the rapidly growing social innovation sector.

Creative entrepreneurs can play a vital role here, with the capacity to integrate traditional design with the necessary social drivers, networks, and communications platforms to enable social innovation.

Designers are placed to be at the vanguard – designing innovative new business models with inherent benefits. This is the entrepreneurship we now need, enabling change and creating pluralist opportunities. An open mind is where it all begins.

Ewan McEoin & Heidi Dokulil

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Compact Desk founder Stefan Kahn believes that the time and energy spent on the design of a business is as fundamental to its success as the strength of the product it produces. Stefan spoke to ADU about the importance of business planning and the potential that lies within the Australian manufacturing industry.
 

Business: Compact Desk
Type of business: Design studio and consultancy producing locally designed and manufactured desk and personal accessories
Location: Double Bay, New South Wales, Australia
Principal: Stefan Kahn
Contact: www.compactdesk.com

ADU: Can you describe your business – what is Compact Desk?
Stefan Kahn: There are really two aspects. One is a range of branded products comprised of systems of desks and personal accessories and the second is a custom product service.

The original concept for the business was that CD would look at different aspects of living, life, lifestyle and develop product ranges around those as discrete product series. So the first range of products deals with desktop organisation and then the second series of products is to do with paper management and presentations.

Having different ranges allows us to introduce new products into each of those series progressively. So you have little sub-product categories that you can continually add new products into but you are also building up what appears to be a major structure of categories that you can target marketing wise to a specific area of the market. That concept was implemented specifically to allow for ever increasing fragments of flexibility if you like because you never know where a product concept is going to go.

We started with seven components. Which then were recombined to make 11 products. There are now over 100 different products that are made from about 65 different product components. It has become much much bigger than before. It has been sold successfully internationally, in Spain, Japan, and the US and a little in New Zealand. And we have had forays into single retailers in Taiwan and France, and some interest in Scandinavia.

What year did you start Compact Desk and what was the motivation for getting started?
Compact Desk was started in 2002 and developed more from a position of necessity rather than choice, or seeing a market opening. I had just finished a range of project-based work that I couldn’t see developing into the future – environmental graphics relative to the Olympics. That quality of project was a once in a career opportunity, I didn’t really want to back step in terms of that kind of work and it was also very grueling, so I had had enough of it by that stage.

But I had developed and prototyped a concept about five years earlier, in about 1995, that was a series of modular containers made from aluminium. It sprung out of a contract I was running at the time and I had developed it as a pet project on the side. I always thought it had some merit but really didn’t have the time to develop it straight away. So following the Olympics I looked at this project on the shelf and thought about how it could be developed commercially, not just creatively, through a business plan.

You mentioned writing a business plan – why do you think a business plan is important for a design enterprise?
It is important for your business that there is a goal – a point that you reach. With Compact Desk my goal was to ultimately sell the business into a bigger enterprise even if I remained involved in it in some way. I saw my limits on capital and my physical capacity to drive the business to where I thought it needed to go vision wise was inadequate so would eventually need a bigger organisation to do that.

Has writing a business plan always happened first for you, at the start of a new idea?
As soon as I graduated I was pretty much had my own business or was self-employed. So I have been in business since I was about 20 and have worked myself into the habit of writing business plans.

The first business I had was a graphic design studio and it was done completely ad hoc. I didn’t have any business plan and it formed its own way organically. But as I became more familiar as a business person, a very young business person, I got more into the habit of planning my projects and I think what that really involved is having to do it as part of my services to clients. So often as my business evolved I would be preparing quite detailed reverse briefs about what we were going to do for them. The business became more and more holistic in terms of what we would design for them and by this stage I had interior designers working for me, as well as an illustrator, and a graphic artist.

It had become part of my process to thrash things out on paper and get some key points. I wasn’t an expert at it in terms of business plan writing, I didn’t have the formal sense of business planning but I always had a documented vision. And to me that is at the heart of a business plan, regardless of the data and the statistics. It’s really knowing where something can go.

With Compact Desk for example, I started writing the business plan about a year before the company was actually formed. I was working on it at the tail end of other projects. Trying to feel out the boundaries of the project, what it could do, what did it look like, and looking at the same time looking for market opportunities to match that.

How much research did you do along the way, and did you look locally and internationally?
Research really was what qualified my assumptions. It’s great to have a completed unfettered vision on something and being a designer that usually comes quite naturally. As soon as you get the initial concept within mental grasp it doesn’t take long, sometimes only seconds, for the future of that project to be unfolded before you. And you can see right beyond the horizon. That’s fantastic, it’s the exhilaration of being a designer, but unless you have milestones to measure that against reality it is just an uncontrolled idea. The research that I did during the business planning period was to see if the marketplace matched my assumptions drawn from the vision.

What sort of tests did you do?
I looked at possible competitors, not that I saw there were any direct competitors, but anything that seemed to be similar to the object. Or the way the company was doing business the way that I would like to do business, so a competitor at brand level. The way that they were distributing into the market, the way they were marketing themselves, the scale of the scale of the operation. All of those things I tried to gather as much as I could. I tried to get some background data on companies, were they multi-million dollar groups or just a small, back room hobby.

The other thing that was quite pivotal in testing my assumptions was the internet which at that time was nothing like what we see today. It was really quite embryonic but in some ways I think I preempted its opportunity and how it could actually become an important part of the business.

I began looking at how you can have a very small pinpoint business with a very large frontage to the market. That actually was one of the cornerstones of my business plan which was not to develop a big organisation at all but to intentionally keep it small, flexible and nimble.

Can you describe the structure of Compact Desk and what inspired that structure?
Australia’s manufacturing industry is not coordinated. It is disparate with lots of little industries doing single processes and working in one material only. We don’t have comprehensive manufacturers that have packaging facilities, or expertise, that are big enough to have all of these sub departments so you can send over a stack of working drawings and say put them into this warehouse. So you have to organise that yourself. If you can do that as a business you have created a completely new enterprise. In my experience that is quite unique to Australia. and I think that is the exciting and fertile ground for industrial development in Australia.

So I had the idea of building a production unit where I was actually the manufacturer as being completely opposite or leading to a position that would completely opposite to that. One of the important things about my business plan was for CD essentially to be a management business, to bring together all of these resources that all exist naturally in the industrial community and bring these together in a coordinated form. It really is about organisation. None of the CD suppliers make a finished product.

There is a lot of trust you need to put into the people who are connected to parts of the market that you are not, for example with retailers. Do you think that to an extent they become important ‘on the ground’ researchers for you?
Yes, for sure. You can’t do it all on your own and there is a real limit to your knowledge particular when you are entering new fields. I had a bit of experience in retail from working with furniture but every field and niche in the marketplace is a new experience and you are better off to pool as wide a range of knowledge as you can get your hands on.

When I launched the business I made a deal with about half a dozen retailers that as soon as we got our first range of prototypes manufactured I would supply them with a sample stock and we would put it in with some point of sale material, almost like an experimental in store exhibit. The product would all be saleable, and we would do that prior to Christmas 2002. That became the deadline. After the Christmas period I interviewed all of the retailers with a questionnaire and aggregated the results of that to see how that matched my assumptions in the business plan.

How did the responses pan out?
It is impossible almost to get a line for line correlation between these things so in many ways it was proving the feel. But there were a few surprises. Like one retailer found that the majority of sales had actually been made to women who were buying for men.

Retailers are essential for a wholesale design business but it can be difficult to get the balance right in developing those relationships. What advice do you have for others?
There is a certain level of disillusionment with retailers that I have gained through my experiences. I think probably more so in Australia because I have had more direct face to face contact. But retailers are different in each country anyway so the sooner you get to know their manner of doing business the better off you are. That means not trying to enforce your way of business on them but to be humble and wait to see how they do business. There is nothing worse than somebody jetting in from no one knows where and trying to enforce terms and conditions upon someone who had never had that in their industry before. It’s just a big turnoff.

What do you see as the challenges of running an Australian design business from Australia?
Number one is the size of the market in Australia. We’re up against it as soon we get out of bed. Australians also have a tendency to prefer things from elsewhere. In fact we somehow seem to justify our worth by how easily we embrace things from everywhere else. Some people would call that cultural cringe and that’s exactly what it is.

Then we have distance, it’s a formidable barrier to entering the market anywhere in the world. Any business plan that doesn’t embrace that with some counter plan probably won’t last.

Getting product into overseas markets is also a big challenge and the heavier the product, the more difficult it is going to be. The way I embraced that in my business plan was to reverse engineer the delivery to the marketplace. I made the decision that I only wanted to fly what I designed. I didn’t want to have to put product onto a ship because that involves a whole range of business procedures that are very slow and that mean that somehow you have got to negotiate your terms of trade around something that is going to be sitting in no mans land for a month on the sea. That really really limits your ability.

All of these factors are part of the engineering of getting the product to market and are why a strategy is essential. It is essential that those practical logistical factors are put on the design menu at the time of concept.

Designing the business at every level seems to be the message here.
Yes, exactly. The thing is that there is no reason why the practical issues of getting the product to the consumer can’t be part of the design consideration in the first place. Rather than creating a great design and then worrying about how you are going to get it somewhere.

If we are specifically looking at a big idea for change in the sector, should we be focusing on the manufacturers who are out there and looking at ways of working with them?
We have the industrial expertise to probably make products equal to anywhere in the world. But unfortunately the sector is disorganised and separated and each of the different processes are controlled under different business owners. You’ve got to cut through that and homogenise the goal of the collective group.

How can that be done?
I have achieved that to a degree, but I wouldn’t say it has been 100 percent successful. Because sometimes one of the key suppliers that you need is totally disinterested or unaware of how that process could be advantageous to them. They are often quite happy in their own little niche.

For example, years ago I was working on a series of pieces for an exhibition and found a metal spinning company that were highly experienced. They had a brilliant CNC spinning machine not dissimilar to the machines they were using at Alessi. Their core business was pizza trays and they produced them by the hundreds and thousands per month and had invested in a million dollar machine to give them the cost advantage of getting pizza trays to market cheaper and quicker. But the capability of that machine was equal to product 100 times the value and they couldn’t see it.

I think that the next big step for Australia is that there needs to be a stronger and more sensitive campaign towards getting industry on the same page as designers. Designers know how this works. There needs to be sharing of this knowledge. But to invite manufacturers into this space – that is totally unproven and aspirational and has massive advantages that can’t be seen right now – is inviting them into a totally different way of thinking. That’s why there needs to be stronger intervention from government. There are proven examples internationally and designers know what has to be done – now it’s time for manufacturers to do the same.

Interview by Heidi Dokulil. Images courtesy Compact Desk.

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To read more ADU creative entrepreneur profiles visit here.

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“The paradox for SMEs is that the best results from social networking occur after a considerable time investment – something that is in very short supply in smaller business. ” (Read on)

Craig Reardon SmartCompany

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Since moving from interior into product design almost five years ago Helen Kontouris has forged relationships and produced products with a number of international manufacturers assuming a position as one of Australia’s most prolific designers. Meanwhile she also juggles her responsibilities as Product Development Manager with Australian brand Schiavello and within her own design studio in Melbourne.                 

Helen spoke to the ADU about managing client relationships, the importance of time management and how she survived and learnt from a couple of failed starts in business.

Business: Helen Kontouris Design (2005)
Type of business: Design studio and consultancy
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Principal: Helen Kontouris
Contact: www.helenkontouris.com

ADU: Can you describe the work of your studio – what does Helen Kontouris Design do?

Helen Kontouris: I am moving in a multitude of directions but I am mainly focused on product and industrial design, working on interior and exterior related type products such as lighting, furniture and homewares. Over the last few months I have also been working in other areas as well like electronics.

Can you tell me what the motivation was to starting your own studio?
I trained and started my career in interior design and had a couple of failed starts. I started my first interior design business at 19 and that failed. Then I started another business in interior design at about 22, I didn’t learn any mistakes from my previous business – so it failed.

The whole premise behind me starting my business was that I had this beautiful ideology that as long as I had great ideas I’ll somehow find clients. I didn’t really understand the core ideas of business. So after the second business failed I had a break, went traveling and then started another interior design business with a good friend of mine who was also in the industry.

We worked really really hard on a number of interior-based projects but within those projects I found I was predominantly working on or developing on a series of product designs within the design of any given space. So two years into that business I realised product design was my real interest and I progressed into that. Eventually we wound up the third interior practice and since 2005 my practice has been focused on products.

You said you didn’t learn from your key mistakes in your other businesses, what did you want to do right the third time around with the interior design business, and then in your fourth and current business?
The third time around, I actually had a book of contacts and some business skills behind me such as process, understanding and researching and studying, how business works etcetera.

How steep a learning curve has it been for you to run your own business?
I guess when you have had a couple of failures in business and the realisation that you didn’t learn from previous mistakes sets in… That was I think the best learning curve I could have had. In the past I might have read something or tried something but not really understood it, without actually seeing what results were gained. It’s a completely different approach now.

Did you have a business plan when you began your current product design business – Helen Kontouris Design?
When I started the product design arm of things my goal was to be able to get a product that would be good enough to get to Milan. So I guess I had a set of goals that I wanted to achieve and that it was about achieving those, then getting to that stage and then reevaluating before aiming for my next set of goals which was to get signed by an international manufacturer.

When that happened I reevaluated and my next aim was that I wanted more international clients. Then when that happened I reevaluated again. I am constantly from week to week and month to month, reevaluating what I want to achieve and what the next steps are. It has worked for me as a business plan – a continual organic evolution, it is quite reactive to what is going on and being able to achieve these things in the shortest amount of time.

What kind of key business skills do you think are necessary to run a successful design business?
The major one I have discovered is to do with building relationships with clients. I think it is important that clients realise that you wholeheartedly understand their business and that you are not there being purely self-indulgent and designing things to get press coverage. Those relationships can’t be based on a self-indulgent process – there is a two-party negotiation there.

How much market research do you do – if you were going to launch a new product to market how much do you research its potential use and market before you go to pitch it to a potential manufacturer?
A lot. What I usually do is first of all I research the company that I am working with quite thoroughly to understand them. I always try to understand where the client is presently and to understand their goals and to essentially, not only ensure that I can take the client where there vision was to be but also to take them into areas that perhaps they had never thought of. That has worked really well for me.

I also discuss with them their future plans and directions and then I go and set out to understand the product they are looking for me to design. Researching what is available presently and seeing that obviously if I am going to create a product I have to create a product that I feel will surpass predecessors beforehand. Otherwise there is no sense in creating another product to replace something else if there are already very good products on the market.

Earlier in your product design career you self-funded solo exhibitions at the Milan Furniture Fair. At your second visit in 2004 your La La Lamp was discovered by the Italian lighting manufacturer Kundalini. That was your first contract with an international manufacturer, can you tell me about how that relationship occurred? Did you go to Milan that time with an agenda?
Absolutely. The agenda was to go there and hopefully secure a contract. As an Australian designer when you self-fund your trips to Italy, especially the Salone Satellite which is the up and coming designer exhibition, the reality is that the financial commitment is quite insane. You normally end up spending probably the same amount that you would spend on a deposit for a small house.

The commitment there for Australian designers is just so much stronger than the Europeans because they can jump in their cars and just drive their products across and into Milan. In contrast, we Australians have to prepare and get things done months in an advance, get them sent months in advance. So you kind of feel like… you have got one shot. You just have to make sure things are so well-resolved.

But while you may go looking for a contract the reality is that what you are most likely to secure is the opportunity of receiving an amazing amount of international press and a chance to build your contact base. You perhaps begin to build relationships with some of these companies and the reality is that things generally won’t happen with fantastic companies for three, four or five years down the track, but you have built that relationship.

Companies aren’t stupid, they want to invest in a designer that they know they will be able to grow with, that has the capacity to not be a one-hit wonder. So they eagerly watch and observe designers globally and see where you are at and where you are heading. For me to secure Kundalini in my second year was a fantastic result really. I couldn’t have asked for more.

How did you go from developing that initial contact to developing a fully-fledged production contract?
A lot of the companies do head to Satellite and look at what is going on with the designers and occasionally designers get picked up, and that’s essentially what happened with me. The director was walking past, which is not that common, and he had a look at my work. We had a small discussion and contact details were exchanged and upon follow-ups a few months later they said ‘We have been discussing it in our product agenda and we are looking to want to go ahead.’

It was a fairly quick process to be honest, much quicker than most of my other relationships with most other manufacturers. For example, I was in Italy at the Milan Furniture Fair last year and I had gone for an interview with a Swedish company that I have been in talks with for the last four or five years. During the meeting the director said ‘Helen we will work with you. No question there, it is just about finding the right product.’ He said ‘You have been coming every year, we talk every year, we know that even though you might produce fantastic work, it has to be a particular product that is right for our company at this particular time, or for our particular direction.’

Directions of companies can change so quickly sometimes, so as a designer you often don’t even know why your product has been dropped, and then you begin to understand as you get further along in your career, you understand the dynamics of companies and you just don’t take it to heart.

What products are you working on at the moment or have been involved in recently?
I am at the tail end of finishing a series of forty outdoor products with Hong Kong company Sun Weave, some indoor/outdoor chair and tables for Schiavello and some other products including some bedding designs for some other companies. I have probably got about 65 products coming out in the next twelve months that seems like a lot, and it is a lot. But the reality is I also know how many projects I have been working on with some fantastic brands that have been dropped in the last twelve months – which were guttering. That’s purely because of what has happened globally and also company directions change.

When you are waiting so long for an interested company to work for you it must be so hard to remain pragmatic – but you don’t want to be the person by the phone waiting for them to call!
I used to be that person by the phone! But you just realise the more products you do and the more experience you get that it is just the nature of the business. It is a game of numbers. There are so many designers trying to secure contracts and companies in the world are getting ten to twenty thousand design proposals every six months. To even fathom the fact that you even happen to be the one chosen and selected, that your work is that good enough, out of that many proposals, it blows your mind. That’s the reason why I have had to rethink the way I approach and deal with clients – to understand that you have to be unique. You are competing against so many thousands of other designs and everyone is just as hungry to secure those contracts. 

It is little things as well. For example, each company likes to be approached in a particular way, and I have learnt that over the years. It is those little nuances that you realise after years of years of meeting with these clients or hearing these things from your friends. I have a small clutch of friends who are doing the same thing as what I am and we openly share our information and that has been an incredibly fantastic group thing to occur.

Has there been an example where you have ended up with a product but the negotiations have been quite fraught?
No. I must admit it has been quite fantastic with most of the companies that I work with and that does go back to the relationships that you build with them – if you are easy to work with but you are able to still get across the whole idea behind your work.

The idea is not to let the concept slide away in favour of profits sometimes or end results. It is finding that fine balance – understanding that the client is looking for a financial returns and wanting something that is going to be sellable, while still as a designer being able to retain your initial concept.

Realistically the contract negotiation aspect is such a small part of what goes on with your dealings with these companies. The reality is it is normally based on a handshake like agreement initially. So much of it is based on trust. The contract is the very last thing that’s thought of.

How important is the element of profile building that is gained from the international exposure that is a by-product of having work put into production by an international company?
It’s really important. The exposure you gain is considerable, which assists in being more accessible to the public who are going to look to purchase your products.

Initially, did you see getting your product put into production as purely a profile building exercise or as an opportunity for a significant financial return? Are the financial incentives of those relationships worthwhile in the end?
I have found them financially very rewarding. I like working on a royalty basis because keeps you on your toes to ensure that you are going to create a product that is really going to work well within the marketplace and for that client. Because at the end of the day if you haven’t created something that is going to work well and sell very well, the company you are working with is not going to benefit and you are not going to benefit either.

In September last year you assumed a position as a product development consultant with Schiavello, there aren’t that many designers in Australia that work in that way with manufacturers, though it is a common model overseas, how did that position come about?
I had been working with Schiavello for about five years producing products that I have licensed to them. Again it comes down to that relationship – the director and are quite good friends, so it was just really an organic progression. I already worked so closely with them looking at producing new products with them, then the conversation came about that they needed someone who could oversee that area of their company.

So they were looking at that European model of working?
Yes. The director understands the European market very well and I just think he truly sees the value in working with, obviously innovation and great design, and working with different designers in Australia and globally to ensure that his company has a uniqueness that can carry them forward in the year to come.

Is part of that role identifying other designers that could perhaps work with Schiavello?
Absolutely. There are going to be opportunities where I can bring on designers from Australia and there will be other opportunities where I could potentially look at international designers that may be of interest.

How do you juggle your responsibilities – to Schiavello, to your international clients, and within your own studio?
Time management! I really ensure that I work very very efficiently. There isn’t a great deal of gap time when I am not ensuring something is getting done.

Can you give me an outline of what is going on in your studio on an average day?
I am quite disciplined and start with the most difficult or mundane things required to complete for the day, I then write mini lists and number them in importance so that I don’t get distracted by the easiest things first. The other main thing I try to do is be really efficient with my time. If I realise that I am not progressing with a concept I switch to another project with fresh eyes so that I am not deliberating for too long. I then come back to it again.

It is a difficult thing when you are working for yourself in a studio environment you have the opportunity to slack off or whatever. But the reality for me is that I have always had this embedded thing that I start with the hard stuff for the day and then finish with the easy stuff.

How much time would you spend on a day-to-day basis on design and how much on business administration etc.?
I would say three quarters of my time these days would be spent designing.

That’s amazing!
I know and sometimes a day is spent that is 100% designing. I loathe having to do the banal things you have to do when running a business – obviously no designer wants to be working on the other elements of the business. But that is the thing about working on the things you don’t want to do first for the day which is what I do, working on the stuff I don’t want to be doing, the design stuff is the fun stuff.

How many staff do you have? Because it sounds like you have got that support to spend all that time on design.
I have got a couple of engineers, a product renderer and that’s it. Basically I have then got an accountant that I sub-contract to.

Running an Australian design business, what particular challenges do you face that are perhaps unique to the Australian situation?
The distance is somewhat an obstacle. I have had conversations with manufacturers that have said ‘Look, if you can’t be in Europe and come and see us one to two times a week, we just can’t work with you.’ I know that I am never going to get that client because I don’t live in Europe! But then I work with other companies in Europe that are fine for that not to occur and we can discuss and work together in other ways.

I feel as an Australian designer I have needed to be more resilient than many international designers. It has meant that my approach with clients has had to be more unique so that they don’t see the distance as being an obstacle and that has helped shaped the way I work as a result.

And you have made a conscious decision to stay in Australia haven’t you?
I have and in the early days I was asked, by some of the best design companies in Europe, to come and work with them, but that wasn’t really something that I wanted to do. In the last couple of years I have had companies ask me to kind of creative direct them and oversee their directions, again it is all about understanding that as fantastic an opportunity as that is, that also means that I have to move countries from somewhere I love to be. I do understand that if I was living in Europe of course it would be much easier and I am very confident that I would be even further along in my career than I am now, but it is a decision I have made to live in a country that I absolutely love.

Interview by Madeleine Hinchy. Images courtesy Helen Kontouris Design.

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To read more ADU creative entrepreneur profiles visit here.

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“To drive growth in any business you need to find some point of difference which can give you a head start on the competition. You need a competitive advantage which is sufficiently important to your target market that you get the business rather than your competitors.. The conventional answer is usually strong intellectual property position but not every business can create this advantage. However, a little more creative thinking might suggest that you try to gain control over an item of supply which is essential to the end-user solution. You then own the entire supply chain.” Read on

Tom McKaskill SmartCompany

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Melbourne-based Third Drawer Down is most commonly spoken about as ‘that tea towel company’ but in reality it is a whole lot more. In six years, director Abbie Crompton has expanded her business beyond limited edition tea towels and other products, to now include two other successful streams – an online store and retail space in Fitzroy, described as a ‘museum of art souvenirs’ and also a highly specialised agency that works exclusively with the retail arms of art and design museums around the world.         

Abi spoke to the ADU about her vision for Third Drawer Down and how she has dealt with copycats and remained true to the values she set out at the beginning.

Business: Third Drawer Down (2003)
Type of business: Production and wholesale of limited edition products with international artists and designers through the Third Drawer Down project; boutique and online retailer; consultancy and agency that works with international art and design museums on the production of art souvenirs.
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Principal: Abi Crompton, Founder and Director
Contact: www.thirddrawerdown.com

ADU: What was your goal when you first started – you have said it was about making art accessible, did it start as a casual thing, or did you ever imagine that it would grow to what it has?

Abi Crompton: The project part of my business was very much based around what pop art did in the sixties – making multiples of art objects in order to offer something to the public that was affordable and very much accessible. That was really the backbone of Third Drawer down and where it came from.

When I started it, one of the biggest questions that I had was whether I wanted Third Drawer Down to be part of tradition, or whether I wanted it to be part of a trend. I decided to take the tradition path. So it was always my focus to develop an agency and for it to be more than just a tea towel project but I suppose I did approach it by being part of tradition, that you need to repeat things over and over again for it to become a part of tradition. Because if it is a trend I would have done a tea towel for one or two seasons and then kind of ended that and made another product or project. I took the viewpoint I had to keep repeating it.

Why were tea towels chosen to be the product that would become a tradition?
I owe that to my dad. He had a textile importing business and he had 200 tea towels that he had dyed and they shrunk in the process due to the heat. So he gave those to me and said, ‘Do something with them.’ So coming from a fine art background I started to do appliqué and a whole lot of things on them and I got really bored after the third one.

But I liked the idea of the tea towel – that it was a functional object that was quite universal in its translation, that it was easy to export and the closest thing to an artists’ canvas. That’s also where the brand name came from – the third drawer down is predominantly where people keep their tea towels. But I never intended to do tea towels for the rest of my life – they were a stepping-stone or part of a whole.

It was never really about the object itself – it was about the principals behind it. So when I originally created Third Drawer Down, I created a list of things that on a philosophical level I meant the business to represent. I haven’t deviated from that – it has been the same ever since.

Did you see the project as something that you would be doing full-time one day?
Yes, very much so. I suppose in some ways the projects and the production of limited edition textiles and objects with artists and those sorts of things is more the indulgent part of my business. It is a way of me being able to meet amazing people from all around the world. The agency allows me to work with museums and artists of another caliber and in different directions. We do a lot of textiles in the agency but we make anything from soap bars through to kaleidoscopes to snowdomes to any kind of product – there is quite a diversity in the kind of products that we make.

Your background is in fine arts and psychology – did you work as an artist prior to starting the business?
After I did my fine arts degree I was going to be a practicing artist and I had set up a series of exhibitions and was all sort of ready to go down the ‘art path’. At that stage I was also working at a design bookstore and I went for a job at the National Gallery of Victoria and got the position as a product developer. That was my first experience within the museum field and also designing and developing objects for artists. After I left the NGV I moved to Craft Victoria and it was there that I took my experiences from the NGV and coming from a family background in retail, and a whole lot of stuff, to establish Third Drawer Down.

Many artists deal in singular items and that scarcity is what defines value, why was it important to you to be producing art in limited numbers and multiples and making that accessible to the public?
I suppose it comes from a semi-Socialist idea, allowing not a mass of people, but to allow a greater number of people the enjoyment, or to be a part of a moment in design or in art. I think very much it is about the collective and the collectable. We really try as much as possible to produce things that are accessible within a price range rather than producing a multiple of five at $5000 each producing a multiple of 500 and have them at $40.00 each. It is just a different type of equation that we like to work within.

Have any of your products incidentally ended up in that higher market due to demand – sold out and then resold for more money?
Yes, the products we did in collaboration with Tate Modern and Louise Bourgeois sold out after three days. They were released at the same time as the Frieze Art Fair was on, they sold out of the hanky after three days and because they were editioned pieces the after market through Ebay and other auction houses still exists.

I do find it fascinating, any type of industry that has an after market or potential of that, is really interesting. I think a lot of art and its pricing is an absurd equation anyway. Like you look at artists like Damien Hirst, he kind of uses the sense of the edition, even his books you can buy for 20 pounds or if you want it hand signed it costs 200 pounds.

You have collaborated with over eighty artists since you first start the Third Drawer Down project. Most artists deal in singular items – it must be quite a learning curve for some of them to get their head around the idea of producing multiples.
It is. That’s why when we choose artists to work with it is really about finding people that I not only admire but that are interested in that true sense of collaboration. Each time I learn as much about them and their work as they do about the systems and operations of consumer dynamics. It really is not just about having an artwork and putting it on a product. It’s also working out whether that piece is going to sell. I kind of wondered what I would be using my psychology degree for and I kind of find myself quite often being aware about those kinds of situations.

How many staff do you have?
I have six staff that work for me and they work across the board. I have an industrial designer and someone who specialises in the wholesale retail side of things. It it is a small team but we run across all the different areas and work across the three platforms. I think in a lot of ways it is better to have for the small studio environment. I like to have a smaller internal team and then depending on the project it can either grow or shrink depending what is happening at the time. We do freelance out specific projects and parts of projects, from public relations through to graphic design, if those things are required.

How much business experience did you have prior to starting Third Drawer Down?
I remember on my thirteenth birthday that I didn’t want to come home until I had a job. My family really instilled in me a strong work ethic because they have always had businesses in hospitality through to clothing stores. I always worked throughout my schooling in those types of industry. Again it was a really natural transgression.

Did you start doing everything by yourself?
I remember I used to sleep next to the boxes of my packaging and first thing I would think is ‘I have to sell those!’ I worked out of my home and packed everything myself, did everything myself. So I really started small. I started from me outwards.

Who were your first customers?
I launched the brand at Craft Victoria and it was really nice because the majority of my current customers in Australia all took Third Drawer Down on at the beginning. So I have had really long-term relationships with a lot of the stores that I work with. That’s been important because I believe that if you are going to do something eighteen hours a day, you need to like the people you work with and I kind of work with stores and people that are good people and that I like.

How many stockists would you now have locally and overseas?
We have less stockists than we used to. The core group do really well with Third Drawer Down product so I have made it slightly more exclusive than it used to be. I think in Australia we have fifteen or twenty stores that take on the Third Drawer Down project pieces. I wouldn’t know overseas – we have a nice healthy list of stores in museums around the world and all the major cities in the US. There’s a nice broad spectrum of people that we work with.

Since you started your business there have been a lot of people who have begun designing limited edition or artist designed tea towels in a similar vein to Third Drawer Down, how do you now manage your intellectual property or trade secrets?
It is an issue that I think designers need to be more aware of, to support and nurture other designers ventures instead of climbing into the passenger seat next to them and thinking they can go for the ride too. I have had some artists I have commissioned to work on projects, and then for example, their partners at that time were designers or launching a new range or whatever, and when I am going to launch their commissioned work their partner is launching practically the same thing.

I think perhaps working with artists that may be a problem because they might produce a very similar work again..
Which is fine and we like the idea that we support them by publishing the work and we don’t ever want copyright on their work but it is when they tell their friend or their partner they are working on something with us and then that friend or partner tries to piggy back on the potential success of that product by bringing something out at the same time. I think it is that greedy mentality and it is noted in the retail business. People will tell me when that happens and I guess we just don’t work with that artist again.

Do use confidentiality agreements often?
Yeah. We have had to. It is part of a shift in my business – I am becoming more and more careful in the way that things are discussed. Especially with our clients, we have a lot of intellectual property that we are working with and that confidentiality needs to be enforced all the way through from my designers to the manufacturers.

I know a lot of designers struggle with the issue of how they present confidentiality agreements to a new client. How do you do it?
I email them through to the client before the meeting and they sign it beforehand. So then there isn’t that eye-to-eye contact and the ‘Read this five page document thoroughly and sign the bottom’ moment. But ultimately confidentiality agreements mean jack.

But do you think that confidentiality agreements make people think twice about ripping off your designs?
No, I think ultimately what you have to hold onto is that you are hopefully going to be dealing with good people and it’s a trust factor and when that trust is broken then you have to just move on and find someone else to work with. You can’t be stagnant in moving forward. There are people out there that are mavericks and they are the idea creators and then there are the followers. I see in my own brand, that the followers copy things I did five years ago but you have to keep moving on from it.

Have you ever had a business mentor to help you through?
The only business degree I have ever given myself was to just do it. You know I’ve thought ‘I wish I had done a business degree, I wish I knew how to conduct business better.’ But it has really just been about going out there and having the confidence to just do what you do. And sometimes it might cost you money because you make mistakes in production or in the way you might set up a project but you learn. It’s the best way to learn.

Considering the breadth of projects you have worked on, you would have dealt with a lot of different manufacturers over the years, every time you work on a new project you must have to find new collaborators.
Yeah I love it! It is a challenge. Like at the moment we are making these crazy beards as a multiple for a gallery and I have never made crazy beards before or as paperweights! Or I had never made a soap slab until I did the John Baldesarri project for Tate Modern. We are making candles at the moment and that’s my challenge, what I love the most, when I have never worked in a material and have to work out how to do it. That’s what gets me up early in the morning. There is someone out there that does what I need and it sometimes takes me to these nether regions – tiny towns in India where they do handrolled edging of handkerchiefs. That exploration is what I like the most about my job.

How do you hear about manufacturers?
Traveling.. I don’t know. It’s like my radar. You know we are all tuned to a particular radio station? Well I don’t know what station I am tuned too but it is quite a diverse style of channel!

What would have been the major high that you have had in Third Drawer Down?
I have had some nice things, like the time I was in The New York Times. That was a great thing. That was about four years ago, media wise that was a really nice pinnacle and it was really good for online sales, so I got a double high out of that. One of my highlights was my meeting with the artist Louise Bourgeois.

There’s a marketing purpose to the art souvenir, how do the artists respond to that when you are trying to create a response to their work in a way that’s kind of commercial?
I think they have got to be trusting and aware of what we do. I suppose because we have been doing this for a long enough time now that they know about us already so there is trust in that. It also comes back to this thing that I am very aware of them – I know about their work and what their beliefs are.

You do a lot of research don’t you – theoretical research – when developing a new product? Because a lot of your products are based on art historical references.
I know but they are all really strange ones! Like the reason I did the letraset product. I actually got drunk with one of the founders of letraset in Boston and spent about an hour and a half going up and down in a lift and talking to him about how sad it was that the brand that created so many fonts and was so needed by the design industry and when computers came in, people stopped using letraset, because there were font libraries on computers. Those sorts of things really effect me. But as I said they are all really random. Things come from such random places but I think that’s the same with anyone who works with products and ideas.

Has there been a major low in your career?
I have to say one of my other side projects MagnaArt – which probably wasn’t a low it was a huge learning curve and I learnt a lot. I developed the product because I noticed that a lot of people were stretching our tea towels so on behalf of my customers I started to look for a really simple hanging system for textile works that didn’t damage the wall and was affordable. I started to do research but I couldn’t find anything out there.

So I used the post-it note as my brief to myself and designed this simple magnetic hanging system. That was my first experience of mass-production. I was dealing in quantities of tens of thousands to get anything produced and I kind of had spent so much time researching and business planning. I started a new brand and all these sorts of things. There was the intellectual property side of it – patents and trademarks and all that stuff.

My distributors were hyped about it but then when it went out to market it was a really slow burner. I developed that product maybe four years ago now and it is kicking on – I don’t do any marketing for it at all and we have the same distributors that distribute it. But I thought I was going to become a millionaire out of it! In the end, people really love the product but it is not how I had anticipated it to be, my expectations were a lot higher.

So there have been points where I have been like ‘Do I have to deal with this product again? Do I have to reorder it?’ because it didn’t give me happiness. It is a metal object that really doesn’t have any relationship to an idea or to an image that is visually pleasing to me, there is no sensory relationship. So I really couldn’t handle it so I called it MagFart! And I love the product because it is like my little bugger but at the same time its one of those products where I would be happy to not do it but people still want it so I keep producing it.

But I learnt so much through that product. I realised that I can’t do anything unless I love it and that it has to be sensory.

Are there any particular challenges that you think are quite specific to being an Australian design business?
I think a lot of people including myself realize that there is a central periphery problem that exists in the creative industries in Australia. We are very much a part of the world and all amazing travelers but at the end of the day we are on the other side of the world. Like if you have a meeting with someone at 3pm in the afternoon in New York, they don’t realise you are up at 5:30am having a cup of coffee so you don’t have sleepy voice to have that meeting with them. They don’t realise that we go further and that we have to work harder to be part of the global network system.

Have you ever considered moving overseas to pursue business opportunities?
No. I love it here and I think if I was living in the middle of the world in New York or somewhere like that, I would probably not have the confidence or way of seeing that I do, living so far away.

What are the next steps for you – what are you working on at the moment?
We are building a range of objects in collaboration with museums that will be distributed more broadly than our exclusive projects. They won’t be mass-produced but we work a lot with museums on products that are then exclusive to that museum. Now we are kind of making a series where we will work with a museum on a range and then be able to distribute them to a larger community of stores.

In terms of the development of the business – what’s your vision?
I really like where we are at the moment and I kind of joke with my staff – ‘Lets go out and open 500 stores around the world!’ and they look at me like ‘Oh God no!’ But I like it small. Now it is just about polishing.

Interview by Madeleine Hinchy. Images courtesy Third Drawer Down.

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“With more applications received than there is money available to fund projects, consider these tips when writing your grant application.” Read on

Design Victoria

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“Email marketing can be tough. Your strategy and execution doesn’t have to be that bad for it to shut down communication with customers… You’d imagine that the consumer judges each new unread email from you independently of previous emails. But you’d be wrong.” Read on

Alan Jones Australian Anthill

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The Beijing Studio Center is a non-profit organisation that supports artists, designers, architects, curators and writers to stay and work in Beijing through their international residency program.

The centre is located in Songzhuang Art Village, the biggest art area in China. BSC residents are immersed in an area in which an estimated 3000 Chinese international artists live and work at any one time. There are also twenty museums, over seventy contemporary art galleries and fifty art supplies stores in the vicinity. 

Fellowships are offered once a year with applications due in July. Outside this framework interested applicants can apply for a paid residency which costs approximately 700 euros per month and includes accommodation, studio space and three meals a day.

Ongoing opportunity.

For more information and to apply visit here.

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The Department of Culture and the Arts Western Australia offers Artflight – a grant category that supports Western Australian artists, designers and arts workers to attend events at short notice that have strategic significance to the development of their arts practice or profession.

Funding of up to $5,000 may be granted to pursue activities including but not limited to:

- Attendance at the opening of your exhibition
- Presentation of a conference paper
- Attendance at short courses or workshops with highly specialised professional development where entry is competitive.

Events or activities may be within Western Australia, Australia or abroad. 

This is an ongoing opportunity.

For more information visit here.

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“The internet literally brings home the idea of a globalised world, but e-businesses cannot afford to be complacent about the global customer when it comes to exporting. Here’s a guide on how to think global, act digital and create an international e-business.” Read on

Adeline Teoh Dynamic Export

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The Australian Financial Review Magazine’s annual design issue came out late last week featuring an article by design writer Robert Bevan on the Springboard project. 

Rob spoke to a series of designers who took part in Stage Two of the program about their experience and where they are at now with their businesses.

You can read a pdf of the article here.

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