The Case For Design

None of us need chairs to sit on, we can sit on the floor. However, in Europe, we choose to sit on chairs because culturally we acknowledge that furniture is important to us both at home and in business.

Our British furniture industry presents a huge opportunity to express our rich British way of life with all it’s regional and historical variations in a Federalised Europe, through design, for financial profit. Every woman, man and child in Europe needs furniture products. Every business in Europe buys furniture products. Research demonstrates that British furniture products fail to do as well as they might in Europe because potential customers simply don’t like them, the way they look or work. It’s not because they are un-usable or cost too much. Only six per cent of domestic products are imported to the United Kingdom from third world countries—price and utilitarian function are not the primary issues but aesthetics and innovation are. Quite simply, our furniture products culturally and aesthetically fail to distinguish themselves in the marketplace and fail to excite the end user or specifier.

There are four reasons why the furniture industry is vitally important to Britain and why we must find a way to realise its potential:

1 Furniture is important to Britain because culturally it should satisfy our utilitarian and social needs for products that support us through our daily tasks in comfort and in an appropriate manner or ‘style’.

2 The furniture industry is important for Britain as its products should dramatise and distinguish our homes and businesses from the homes and businesses of our competitor countries, differentiating British products and the service industries which use them from other European products and services, enabling Britain to be visible, desirable and competitive in the marketplace.

3 The furniture industry is important for Britain’s prosperity because it should have the capability to produce products with a high added-value and broad margins, products which have a specially designed ‘British’ personality customers will learn to identify and for which they will expect to pay a premium price.

4 The furniture industry is important to Britain because it should be an infrastructural industry, encompassing consultancy services, manufacturing, wholesale, distribution and retail—a collective force capable of supporting and protecting itself through integrated long-term strategies, research and development and therefore innovation, enabling Britain to lead markets, not follow market leaders.

But does the British furniture industry achieve all it might? Research tells us it does not. There are two main reasons I have identified which go some way to explaining why we underachieve: our history and our current business values:

1 Our recent historical predeliction for heavy engineering, science and the primacy of mathematical, quantitative measurement over the arts and qualitative measurement, does not place Britain in a strong position when dealing with issues of aesthetics and style. Marketing graduates, and most engineers, unfortunately cannot draw or conceive new product ideas in three dimensions but tend to be market-led and therefore anti-innovation. This is probably why we revere and follow the market leaders. Aesthetics and style are ‘human factors’ employed by designers which defy numeric definition and conventional means of measurement. They are mistrusted by the traditional business and financial sectors as require non-numeric interpretation and explanation in order to be understood.

Britain is also unique in Europe in that we do not have a Ministry of Culture. We have a Ministry of Heritage and we have a furniture industry, much of which is based on heritage products. Not British heritage products, not Elizabethan Oak or the Art Deco of the Cunard Queens, a re-interpretation of French Louis IVX will do. In Britain we don’t look to the future or live in the present, we live in the past, often someone else’s past which we endow with misleading notions of quality which confuse end users who mistakenly associate the present with poor quality. Whilst this may lull us into a false sense of security it won’t sell products in Europe, especially when the rest of the world is looking to the new millennium. Businesses want furniture which expresses technological progress and confidence in the future not furniture which hides in the past or tries to sell an English interpretation of French reproduction furniture back to the French.

Instead of employing graduate designers in order to create an innovative controlled and positive statement of British product design, we persist in emulating products produced by our competitors but without their economic climate or experience. Britain has no long term future in producing goods which aspire to be Italian, Spanish or just plain cheap—the Italians and the Spanish will always do it better. We must be concerned with ‘adding value’ to products through exploring our own cultural richness and expressing it in qualities customers can be helped to recognise, to see value in and pay a premium cost for. Britain cannot compete with developing countries on a cost and volume basis, nor should we need to.

2 This current situation is further aggravated by the short term attitudes and values adopted by business. The three monthly reporting structures of PLCs and product cycles as short as ten minutes in financial business sectors. New furniture products may be developed over years, not months, and the payback period may take even longer. The benefits are market leadership and sector share, strength through integration of all aspects of the industry and long term stability.

So why does the furniture industry need designers? For 3 reasons:

1 The European furniture we so eagerly import doesn’t out-perform British furniture ergonomically. Most furniture products fulfil their most obvious function adequately; to support our bodies comfortably and assist us in performing a variety of tasks. However, much European furniture does out-perform British furniture through doing much more than fulfiling ergonomic requirements alone; our European competitors recognise that aesthetic satisfaction is also a functional requirement of a successful product, not a last-minute, stylistic addition but an integral component in the design of any successful product.

2 Furniture can be made durable and cost effective but what is much harder to do is to make it recognisably British, or Scottish or Welsh or East Anglian. The French, Spanish, Italians and Germans seem to understand and value the expression of their cultural identities through products because they know there is a direct correlation between cultural characteristics and financial value. Spain, Italy and France all have recognisable regional cultures: Catalonia, Tuscany and Provence, we know them all through their products which are jealously designed and nurtured to ensure they are identifiable and desirable in the marketplace. This does not preclude modernity or an international outlook but ensures we have our own identifiable, British interpretation of what we consider to be avante guarde or exotic.

3 The expression of our British cultural difference, our cultural specialness, through designed furniture can help us make our products aesthetically distinguishable, desirable and command premium prices in a Federalised European marketplace.

For these three reasons graduate designers must be employed by the furniture industries if we are to make products which both work well and are attractive to customers and specifiers. Engineers are poorly equipped to control the soft issues in product development, the vital components which fine-tune a product and ensure that it fulfils the expectations of it’s target market. The evolution of these aesthetic elements must be controlled by a designer if the final product is to be financially successful. Thankfully, in Britain we now have innovation in design education which acknowledges the need for designers who are equipped to deal with both engineering and aesthetics—this puts us in a position where we have the capability to lead in the furniture industry if we have the confidence and foresight to do so.

You must take design seriously if the British furniture industry is to have any impact in Europe.

We are fortunate in Britain to have an extremely rich and diverse cultural reservoir, a strong youth culture and a steady supply of excellent graduate designers who are the envy of many of our European competitors and already a successful export unlike our furniture products. Many of these designers belong to a brave new generation equipped with an armoury of analytical methodologies with which to underpin their intuitive skills and actively control the evolution of a new product and its eventual outcome.

Design is about controlling all of the different parameters which make up a successful product and ensure its financial success in the marketplace. Designers are the people who are perfectly equipped to analyse what is special about Britain and work with industry, distribution and retail, ensuring that British products are encoded with recognisable, desirable and value-added components; these elements which specifiers and users desire in furniture products and would consider paying extra for because they enhance and focus product performance, feel new and reveal a confident aspect of Britain which is world class.

However, design doesn’t exist in a vacuum, nor do designers wait for Britain to enter the twentieth century and the European marketplace. Many designers, frustrated with British myopia, have decided to become their own manufacturers and distributors, often failing to realise their true economic potential through lack of economies of scale, finance and experience.

In a sensible industry we should have a structure through which educationalists, designers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and specifiers would be encouraged to find strength through forming lose ties where it is in the whole industry’s interest to collaborate in the pursuit of a common aim.

If designers are to unleash their powerful armoury of skills for Britain’s benefit, and not exclusively for our competitors, in a way which compliments the whole industry: manufacturing, distribution and retailing, they must be represented in a common forum where knowledge and experience will be shared, strategy developed and understanding reached through a common aim; that of securing a world class future for the British furniture industry.