Two of our directors (who are also married to one another) both have iPhones. thier two children have both been pestering them for iPhones for a few months and they both finally agreed that they could have one (they’re good kids!).
Recently. however our Design Director got an Android based phones and showed it to them…and they both, now, have Android phones and will not swap with their parents!
As in many markets, you have pioneers who set the benchmark for others and, as in many markets, the competition understand they have to be better than the market leader to gain that, all important market share.
We understand Microsoft have a new O/S in the wings too…we suspect they will be too arrogant to realise they are not the market leaders and, consequently, what they will come up with will be inferior anyway. But who would ever have thought that a search engine provider would end up, potentially, dominating the mobile device market…one day, we’ll design and build a Bugatti beater too!!!
The role of the Design Council is under review.
We have a love/hate relationship with the DC. We absolutely agree that there needs to be a publicly funded body which promotes why design is essential to UK PLC. We also agree that the DC brand is well established and well respected, however this does not, necessarily, mean it is doing a good job for the UK design community.
However, we should declare our vested interest. We are industrial designers, whose job is to help UK businesses gain a competitive advantage through product design. Product design is closely related to manufacture which is high on the new Governments agenda to help UK PLC regain its global competitive advantage; innovation through new products leading to manufactured products. We have blogged about this in the past which we call manuvation; the art of innovating and collecting cash from the innovation by making something.
Our frustration (hate is too negative) is the DC is too focused towards the ‘art of design’ rather than the ‘industry of design’. For example, their highly publicised “Designing Demand” program, of which we are registered practitioners, has not lead to one single enquiry in the past two years. The “Reducing mobile theft” initiative was fundamentally flawed because, without the support of the mobile phone manufacturers, it will be impossible to achieve the goal. The recent “patient dignity” initiative received great publicity, however, if you talk to some of the NHS trusts (which we do), they will tell you that some of the solutions will never be economically viable within the NHS. The most recent is an initiative where NFP organisations can get micro grants (£3K) to promote design; the total pot is £100K, surely this is the role of the DC itself; why are they offering small sums to NFPs to do their job for them?
At a function in 2009, it was a warm October day; the offices had the central heating on and the air conditioning had to be switched on in the meeting room because of the heat…and the DC promote sustainable environmentally friendly design!
What should be most worrying for the design community is the fact that the DC have set up a private limited by Guarantee Company. What is its purpose; is it going to offer services that are currently offered by the private sector design community? Is this allowed under the rules of public financing?
As we say, the relationship is one of frustration; what the DC needs is the likes of James Dyson as its chair; he is someone who understands what UK PLC needs and the key role that all design disciplines can contribute to giving UK PLC a competitive advantage.
We were asked to support a program which encourages young people to look at societal problems, finding solutions that are economically viable.
The Yorkshire finalists were invited to the Houses of Parliament for the judging of their ideas and the event was hosted by Hilary Benn (you can see the pictures here).
The quality of the entrants was superb with many of the ideas having the potential to be commercially viable, which bodes well for the next generation of wealth creators that UK PLC will need.
What intrigued us that 8 of the 10 teams were girls and 9 of the 10 judges were middle aged men.
What happens to all that female talent between youth and middle age? We guess many go on to take that ultimate challenge, bringing up their children (which is a much harder task than saving the planet!).
But if we are to find solutions to the planet’s problems, we will need the talents of women; question is how do we get them reengaged?
Perhaps if we can convince women that saving the planet is a doddle compared to bringing up children, and saving the planet is good for their children, the planet can be saved!
This is an exciting time for Fripp Design and Research; we are about to launch the first of our own products. Keeping to the theme of solving problems through design, we recognised a problem with the display and merchandising of products displayed on Pallets.
Major retailers complain that wooden Pallets look unsightly when displaying goods in store and would prefer for goods to be displayed on plastic Pallets instead. The problem with this is, for the Pallet logistic companies, using Plastic Pallets is not economic to do.
With the Pallet Sign you hide the wooden Pallet from view and give a merchandiser space to advertise the goods being sold from the Pallet.
Pallet Sign can be seen at www.palletsign.co.uk and will be launched at the In Store show at Olympia on 29th and 30th June 2010.
We’ve just finished watching the England game against Slovenia in the conference centre at our offices in the Technology Centre at the Advanced Manufacturing Park.
As we look out to all the other facilities, which include the Boeing/AMRC centre, The Welding Institute (TWI) and the Castings Technology International (CTI) facility, it occurs to us, that the total investment in the park (including the land, the buildings, the equipment and the people) would not buy you Wayne Rooney!
Do not get us wrong, we believe in the free market and entrepreneurship, but it does create some perverse consequences…a game of football anyone!
These are interesting time for Fripp Design and Research as we prepare to launch two of our own products.
Although we originally planned to license our IP, we finally decided to manufacture them instead.
We have two choices; either invest in setting up our own manufacturing facility or, alternatively, buy a manufacturing business with the skills and knowledge to add our products into their existing product portfolio.
So, if anyone knows of a manufacturing business in the North Midlands/South Yorkshire region up for sale, we’d like to hear from them.
We’re very pleased to announce that Charles Turner, MD of Sheffield based Durham-Duplex and Chairman of Made in Sheffield has agreed to join the board of Fripp Design and Research as non executive Chairman.
We all look forward to Charles helping the business to continue its growth as well as develop its manufacturing capability for the products it currently has in development.
One of the directors of Fripp Design and Research is the proud owner of an early 90’s Porsche. Recently after a brief spin in the peak district a huge stone chip was to be found in the windscreen. Yesterday, the windscreen was replaced but the director was concearned when the job took such little time to complete. The concern was that this car started off in life as a thing of real quality and that such an important job could never be completed to the same standard in such a short space of time. As it turns out, he was wrong. The replacement is superb and there’s a very good reason for both the quality and speed of the work; it was undertaken by a professional.
Professionals are often viewed as individuals who produce work of the best quality and do not cut corners but in fact they do. Professionals in any role will cut corners but ONLY to improve the speed and NEVER at the cost of quality. In the same way the the windscreen repair technician quickly delivered superb quality work because he has the experience, the correct tools and the training to be able to optimise the job at hand without any fuss or complexity. Fripp Design and Research understands, what clients really want (and we would argue what they really need!) is the very best quality and innovative design work to meet the tightest of deadlines. There is, for example, a huge variety of CAD software; some good, some bad, some slow, some fast. Fripp Design and Research has invested heavily in the right software (rather than the cheapest) because it does not compromise in its purpose and our extensive training means that we are very fast and very effective at using it!
It’s a good job that like us, the technician was able to undertake his work in this manner as it started to rain just as the windscreen went on and so thanks to cutting only the right corners, the director escaped an interior valet too!
Our MD went to a political hustings this week at Costco in Sheffield and found himself getting rather hot under the collar. It seems that the FSB are the antithesis of innovation in the private sector, the whole thrust of their contribution was the cost of…
He sent the following email to John Walker, their president:
“Sir,
I attended political hustings organised by the FSB in Sheffield this week.
I have to say I was very disappointed at the thrust of the FSB’s position on most issues.
It seems to me that the FSB’s focus is on costs; the cost of employment, the cost of the minimum wage, the cost to local business through the dominance of supermarkets and so on.
The fact is all statutory imposed costs affects everyone (including the big supermarkets) i.e. it is a level playing field. If a business focuses solely on a strategy of ‘lowest cost’ then they are doomed to fail as there will always be someone who will do something cheaper.
For me, SMEs need to concentrate on value add; here’s an example.
There is a famous brand of butchers in Sheffield called Talbots. Apparently, a couple of decades ago, they had butcher shops across Sheffield. Today they have 1 in Sheffield but it is a thriving business; how?
It realised it could not compete with the supermarkets which are cost rather than quality driven. But there is a constituency of people out there who value quality. So what do they now do? They sell wholesale to quality restaurants and individuals who value quality. The shop is used primarily to prepare the meat and they deliver via vans (thus not paying a mortgage, business rates, electricity etc) to deliver their quality product to their customers.
I could give you many more examples, my point is as an SME business I should want to be joining the FSB; however if the FSB’s focus is primarily about complaining about the costs to business, then I think the FSB is doing SME businesses a massive disfavour.
The local agencies, here in South Yorkshire, RIDO and Creative Sheffield (who I’ve copied on this email) understand this and, so, have much more relevancy to my business.
Please take this in the spirit it is meant; I’m passionate about small businesses (my own father built the biggest branch of the NFSE, as it was back in the ‘70’s, in the UK in Grimsby and Cleethorpes), I just think the FSB should be selling a more positive message about how to compete against the ‘big boys’ in the 21st Century. ”
BTW, Talbots meat is to die for (apologies to the vegeterians reading this)
Abhi, our newest designer is a big fan of the Mumbai Indians in the IPL. Apparently they are through to the final on Sunday so we are all routing for Abhi’s team.
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