DesignDirect

How to start your own micro brand

Roger Ball with Heidi Overhill

Foreword by John Heskett

Copyright 2012 Roger Ball and Heidi Overhill The moral right of the authors have been asserted

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. ISBN 978-988-15831-1-6 DesignDirect School of Design The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom, Kowloon Hong Kong

Published by PTeC Printed and bound in Hong Kong Visit us at:

www.designdirect.com.hk

DesignDirect
How to start your own micro brand

Roger Ball with Heidi Overhill

Foreword by John Heskett

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Lorraine Justice for her early championing of the concept of DesignDirect both as a course and as a book. Thanks also to Dr. Ernesto Spicciolato for brilliant co-teaching and the sharpest eye in product design, and to the many others at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University who also contributed unwavering support never forgetting the students whose energy, drive and enthusiasm gave life to this idea in the first place. Our indefatigable editor, Signe Hoffos, purged our prose of many of its more egregious errors. Janis Tsui was the perfect assistant, who solved so many different problems in so many different ways that there is no space to list them all. Any errors remaining in the text are despite their best efforts on our behalf. The book itself could not have happened without the DesignDirect entrepreneurs who generously took time to share their stories thank-you Arnault Castel, Bernat Cuni, David Ericsson, Cory Kidd, Elaine Young and Michael Young. And, most of all, we would like to thank our family members for their great patience with all the frantic late night typing thank you Alan, Kiera, Neisha, Nora, and most of all, Yaling.

Foreword

With the rise of successive waves of industrialization there has been a series of fundamental changes in concepts of how design is understood and practiced. Consider, for example, the shift beginning in the seventeenth century that brought the gentlemanly profession of architecture into being out of the age-old traditions of craft builders. The latter were not eradicated, but evolved in their own groove, and it is true that a majority of buildings are still constructed by them without the intervention of architects. A parallel development was the emergence of naval architects from shipwrights. Another phase of development came with the general spread of industrialization based on steam power, when the only people who could be found to design the forms of the vast array of products that poured out of factories were engineers who were responsible for the functional performance of capital goods such as transportation vehicles or military armaments, and artists, whose talent for drawing superficial form gave products a decorative veneer, although their designs usually required the skills of draughtsmen before they could be converted to a production specification. There followed at the end of the nineteenth century a new form of power with the rapid spread of electrification, which provided the basis for a new revolution in industry with the dominance of mass production in the USA by around 1920. The prefix mass came to dominate the twentieth century, as in mass media, mass communications, mass market, mass advertising, mass consumption, mass education and mass transportation, to name some

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of the most prominent. The major characteristics of mass production that underpinned all these other manifestations were that it was large-scale, requiring heavy investment, and was very inflexible. Tooling-up for a new product could take as much as six months. It depended upon standardization and a high degree of division of labour in order to produce large quantities of low-cost products. This created a problem: how could the long-term inflexibility of mass production be reconciled with the marketing need for variety and stimulation of demand by regular changes of form? The answer was provided by Alfred P. Sloan, head of General Motors, who was the originator of the concept of design as styling. This meant regular annual model changes in which the superficial form of automobiles was changed, while the mechanical and electrical components within the package remained constant over long periods. The costs of styling changes were deemed acceptable for the stimulus they brought to advertising and marketing. Styling as the dominant design technique rapidly spread to other consumer products and, indeed, is still very widespread in many industries. The dominance of mass, however, is being undermined by a new phase of change in our time and, in particular, the spread of information technology and flexible manufacturing. These have broken down the need for large scale and provided a rapid means of modifying production lines to adapt to niche markets. Small is not only beautiful, as Eugene Schumacher proclaimed, it can also be profitable on the basis of customization and meeting the specific needs of small groups and even of individuals without imposing the uniformity of standardization. Yet mass production is not under threat in some ways it is being transmuted into what can be called super mass production, with giant corporations regarding the world as their oyster. They are not going unchallenged, however, as the many current variants demonstrate. It is in the context of Asia in the last three decades that modifications of mass production have taken many other forms. One of the most interesting is that some designers, who by various means have gained extensive experience in the new industrial paradigms, have come to combine their design skills with entrepreneurial insights and so open up new possibilities of meeting the needs of individuals, rather than conforming to the needs of large mass producers.

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In this book, Roger Ball and Heidi Overhill explore the emergence of design entrepreneurship in Hong Kong and particularly at the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. They bring a depth of experience of practice and education to bear, with a rich spectrum of examples, on one of the most interesting of the many transformations sweeping across the world of design in our time.

John Heskett
Dean, School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University October, 2011

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Contents

Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction

v vii xv

One: Design: Direct from the Designer to the Consumer The traditional model: Mass production The model changes: The rise of Asia New: Digital manufacturing New: The long tail New: Diversified advertising New: Disintermediation End result: DesignDirect

1 3 4 8 9 10 11

Two: Why are there no designers who are CEOs? SizeChina The Business of Design Week Gala dinner at BODW Designers in the boardroom

14 16 17 18

Three: Design Education Design and the Industrial Revolution The Bauhaus and geometry American design and advertising Design and the digital revolution Design education for professional practice Employment in-house

22 23 26 27 28 29

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Consulting Manufacture it yourself Design thinking Emerging models Planting a forest DesignDirect

30 31 31 32 34 35

Four: First Day of Class Working in teams Surprise and failure Slide show Test by Internet New opportunities

38 40 42 43 45

Five: Branding The pre-history of branding Branding meets packaging Product skinning Mass media and shopping Information, fast Universal branding Brand management Design planning No logo? Self branding in the age of the Internet Pitching your brand

47 49 52 52 54 54 56 58 59 60 61

Six: Guest Lecturers Come to Class Visiting experts David Ericsson of VOID Watches Michael Young and the PXR-6 Bernat Cuni of SDWorks Arnault Castel of Kapok Elaine Young of LAByrinth Cory Kidd of Intuitive Automata

64 66 68 71 74 76 78

Seven: The Internet Computers, the Internet and the World Wide Web Searching the Web Blogs Web sales Filters

84 85 87 90 92

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Eight: Student Assignments Brand profile Business proposition Public speaking Visuals Brand name Strategy Web site Web search optimization

96 98 100 100 102 105 106 107

Nine: Intellectual Property The value of mass produced ideas Intellectual property protection Copyright Patents Trademarks Design right and registration The value of protection Employment and intellectual property Problems with intellectual property Future intellectual property

111 114 115 117 119 120 121 123 126 130

Ten: Class Critique Product Prototype

131 133

Eleven: Entrepreneurs and Retailers The cost of failure Hard choices Year One Choose Think small Unlimited Edition DesignDirect goes to market Case Study

140 141 141 142 143 143 144 147

Twelve: Last Day of Class Feedback Looking forward

158 159

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Thirteen: A Place to Stand The new field of design opportunity Rise of Chinese micro-brands New categories: Increased complexities Endnotes Index About the authors Photo and Design Credits

162 162 163 165 191 197 199

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Introduction

I have been waiting for DesignDirect all my life. For thirty years I have been immersed in the world of design, as a student, staff designer, design consultant, instructor, and brand creator. Everything I learned to question during that time seems now to have been leading all along straight towards the idea of DesignDirect. My first job out of design school was with Cooper Canada. A family-owned sporting goods business located in Toronto, it was the number one ice hockey brand in the world. Product passion permeated the company at every level. This was not marketing hype or a cutesy back-story concocted by branding professionals. It was visceral; everyone in the company believed in the product they were making, and their mission as a company. In those days before Asian sourcing, each one of the hundreds of products was made on the premises by an army of Portuguese and Maltese matrons devoted to doing a good job. From the vantage point of my office just beside the factory floor, I saw the pride and ingenuity they put into every Cooper product. Cooper had a full test lab on site, plus a comprehensive plastic and foam molding operation, a leather finishing facility, and every type of sewing machine imaginable (plus a few beyond imagination). They invested their profits back into the firm to buy new technologies and nurture new ideas. Their 20-person in-house design staff was by far the largest in Canada for a company that size. I stood dumbfounded before their first German computer-controlled laser-cutting machine, bought to replace the thousands of

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steel fabric-cutting dies. No one at school had ever mentioned such a thing. Cooper was way ahead of the curve. During my last year with the company, 1985, the ageing family managers recruited fresh blood to move their proud business forward. The new president was a slick MBA who in public promised a new era of stupendous growth and in private smirked at quaint old Cooper ways. He did what MBAs are trained to do. He sold the company at a profit to other charlatans. Within five years the Cooper brand was no more, a casualty of neglect and incompetence. In many ways, this has been the history of North American manufacturing for the past generation, with the same mistakes repeated again and again. Standing helpless on the sidelines watching that debacle, I learned my first lesson that would ultimately lead to DesignDirect. Once product passion disappears from a companys leadership the brand wont long survive. I moved on to become CEO of the consulting firm Paradox Design. Over the next 18 years, I designed products that found runaway success and created new brands, helping my clients to earn millions of dollars for themselves while I earned my hourly consulting fee. I had reached my second DesignDirect moment. Good design is worth money, but designers dont usually get a share. I tried to get a share. I negotiated royalty agreements, designed products on spec, patented ideas, and went so far as to get one product idea tooled, selling a modest number. As my experience grew, I realized that standard methods of commercial product distribution made it next to impossible for a solo designer to succeed in manufacturing a good idea. One day, a young designer who had left Paradox a few months earlier called me up for lunch. I was impressed to see his new car and cool clothes; he had obviously come a long way in a short time. I asked him what he was doing. He said he had started his own business selling car parts. Car parts? You remember my old Suzuki? he asked. How could I forget! We had teased him unmercifully about that rustedout wreck. Exactly, he agreed. He didnt like his rusty fenders much either, and because he couldnt afford a new car, he eventually got so fed up that he had some replacement fenders made at a friends shop. People noticed them, and asked

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where they could buy some too. So he had ten sets made up, and listed them on eBay. And in only a few months hed sold enough fenders to replace the entire Suzuki, and was branching out with other parts. My jaw dropped. The old business model for product distribution was changing. Around that time, one of my best clients asked for a routine bid on the design of a new helmet. As always, our quote included the four stages of concept, development, tooling, and testing. There was no response, and a few months later I spied a brand new helmet in their trade show booth. Suspecting that the job might have been scooped up by a rival, I asked cautiously, where did that come from? Oh, we OEMd that helmet from our Asian manufacturer, was the casual answer. My client had found a suitable helmet that was ready to buy right off-the-shelf from their overseas Original Equipment Manufacturer. They had spent nothing at all on design and development. There was no way I could compete against that price. The cost of Asian product development was plunging fast. Throughout these years, I continued to teach design part-time, mainly at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD). For example, in 1987, I had launched a new studio class titled Design for Social Needs that focused on sustainability, ageing, and inclusive design. In 1987, that was exciting stuff, but twenty-five years later I saw the same issues still being pitched as the new direction for design. The real world of design might be revolutionizing under Asian sourcing, new technology, and the Internet, but design education as far as I could see was still just re-packaging the same old principles Id learned when I was a student. It wasnt enough. We needed new design career options. I needed a new career option. I was feeling lost; unsure of my way. There was no way to go back design was my life. But I needed time to move forward to think, and to re-invent myself. I sold everything and moved to Italy, completing a Masters degree at the Domus Academy in 2002; and then, in 2004, I moved to Hong Kong. There, I found myself with a birds eye view right down into the heart of scary Asian sourcing and new technology. I was plunged into an exciting mash-up where everything was possible. And as I met people, visited factories, and soaked up the sheer energy of the city, my anxieties about the future of design didnt grow they began to fall away. I began to see that the changes wrought by technology all the short cuts and new ideas from the Internet, and the low costs for manufacturing were not problems at all. They were, of course, opportunities, and not just that, it was

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designers who stood to gain the most from those opportunities. All that was required was a re-set of approach. DesignDirect is that re-set. This isnt the end of something old its the start of something new.

Roger Ball
Professor, School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University February, 2012

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One

Design: Direct from the Designer to the Consumer

Small bands of visionary designers in Hong Kong and Shenzhen are changing the face of branding and design and making good money, too. Outsourcing the physical production of their ideas directly to low-cost Asian suppliers, and using the Internet to sell directly to consumers, these DesignDirect entrepreneurs have bypassed traditional corporations to create their own personal micro brands. They are not alone. Around the world, creative innovators of every kind are exploiting new commercial opportunities afforded by the Internet. Capitalizing on the rise of social networking, on-line shopping and low-scale production for niche marketing, they have created an entirely new vision of what it means to be a designer or an entrepreneur and of what it means to develop and manage a brand.

The traditional model: Mass production

In the past, most product designers have worked for corporations, for one simple reason: only large companies have the staggering amounts of capital required to get conventional mass-produced consumer goods into the market. Consumer product development as we know it can be ridiculously expensive. Development costs for a relatively simple item like a bicycle helmet can run to over half a million dollars. The cost of researching and refining the design is only the beginning. Setting up traditional production equipment requires a huge investment in custom tooling for elements using injectionmolded plastics or deep-drawn steel.

Mass-production facilities tend to be both complex and rigid. They demand skill, time and money to set up, and once established can only turn out a limited range of products, or even just one. Their overwhelming advantage is that, once up and running, they can efficiently churn out that product in abundance, amply repaying the initial investment if the item sells well. The very first injection-molded plastic lawn chair to come off the production line might nominally cost $200,000, but the second costs 90 cents, and by the time the millionth chair is produced, set-up costs have become insignificant. And, of course, for every dollar spent on production, at least twice that much must go into marketing and promotion to inform consumers that the product is available, and persuade them to buy it. In design terms, this means that the first chair must be perfect, because the cost of failure can have devastating effects. Scrupulous research, planning and testing are an essential part of the development process or, at least, they should be. At the same time, anything produced in huge quantities needs to attract a wide audience. There are always exceptions passing fads, successful innovations, the occasional lucky maverick but the high stakes in mass production encourage manufacturers to play it safe, and aim for mass-market sales. Even so, only a small percentage of products ever become commercially successful. In 2005, the director of public affairs for the US Patent Office stated in an interview that of the 1.5 million patents in effect in America, only 3,000 were financially viable; if true, this would translate as a success rate of 0.2% if all those patents applied to commercial products. Of course, patents cover all kinds of things, including many of the vital components that make other products possible. But despite the high risks involved, the tantalizing prospect of mass-market sales keeps the whole apparatus rolling. The sheer scale of investment required for mass production means that a great many consumer goods are only made by companies with the resources material and human to support the whole process from research and development to marketing and fulfillment. However good your idea and no matter how strong your business plan and sales pitch, this is not the kind of collateral money that a creative start-up can borrow. Thus, designers who want to create mass-market consumer products are generally compelled to work for the kind of corporate clients who can make large investments in pursuit of large returns.

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When the clients themselves are creative, and play an active part in developing new ideas, this model can work well. Some of the great moments in 20th century design Scandinavian style of the 1950s and 60s, the sophistication of Italy in the 1960s and 70s were distinguished by the inspired partnerships of gifted designers and visionary clients. Tapio Wirkkala found opportunities with the astonishing Iittala glass company; Ettore Sottsass Jr. honed his skills under the mentorship of Olivetti and Alessi both family-owned firms with the kind of business foresight that spans generations. Client interest in the creative process, coupled with a long-term approach to design and branding, stands in stark contrast to the demand for high returns on short investment cycles which distinguishes much of the market today. When a company is managed by professional MBAs without product passion, R&D is often the first casualty. But when the company belongs to the designer, research and development is the heart of the business. British author Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010), even suggests that the golden age of big business may be passing. He predicts a future in which nimbler small companies will take the economic lead: As islands of top-down planning in a bottom-up sea, big companies have less and less of a future (the smaller the scale the better planning works) The size of the average American company is down from 25 employees to 10 in just 25 years. The market economy is evolving a new form in which even to speak about the power of corporations is to miss the point. Ridley argues that flexible collaboration between light-footed and fast-moving small companies represents the future.

The model changes: The rise of Asia

In the 1990s, a sea change swept over the industrial world as Asia emerged as a center for tool-making and manufacturing. Tool-making had traditionally been a specialized trade, dominated by a cadre of elite, local, unionized workers. It was both expensive and time-consuming. The precision tool required to make an injection-molded plastic part might take 20 or 30 weeks to build, with a single dedicated tool-and-die maker painstakingly crafting it piece by piece, usually within a strictly regulated working day. The scarcity of such skilled workers, and the high cost of their equipment, kept the industry exclusive: there were just not that many tooling shops accessible to new product developers, and there was certainly no room for bargaining. In the early 1990s, Korean suppliers saw an opportunity to undercut Western tool-makers, and reduce delivery time. Paying modest wages to shift

workers who kept the shop open around the clock, they could deliver highquality tools in a third of the time and half the price of their Western competitors, even with the cost of overseas delivery. With the emergence of China as an even lower-cost competitor, tooling prices plummeted. Suddenly, there were thousands of tooling shops eager for business. Today, tooling and plastic parts suppliers are just an email away from any designer keen to experiment. They can be found directly online or sourced through Web-based directories such as Alibaba. Small production runs, once an option only for large manufacturers, are now within reach of anyone with a CAD file and a credit card.

New: Digital manufacturing

As the 21st century opens, mass production is no longer the only way to get a consumer product to the market. Emerging digital technologies have further enhanced the process, and reduced the cost of designing and making new products. Some even offer radically new ways of combining materials in a single product and a single manufacturing process. In the early 1980s, AutoCAD began to liberate designers from their reliance on drafting by hand. As desktop drawing tools evolved, it became ever faster and easier to generate and revise new product ideas. Digital files simulating every detail of the shape, colour and texture of the finished product could be rendered with photographic clarity, making it easier than ever before to review and assess new ideas in the design stage. At the same time, complementary technology was rapidly developing digital scanning systems for three-dimensional objects that could record minute surface detail. Manufacturing and medicine worked in tandem to develop scanners and probes that could create templates for a hip replacement, or compare a finished machine part with its original design. The next challenge was to move from design into production. As early as 1959, researchers at MIT carved an ashtray with a computer-operated milling machine. Such subtractive manufacturing systems are little different from conventional hand-fabricating techniques, such as carving an object from a piece of wood, or fashioning a tool from a sheet of metal. Using laser-cutters, water-jet cutters and five-axis CNC milling machines, computer-operated systems are simply faster and more accurate than traditional methods. These new technologies with their fast set-up times and reasonable costs are ideally suited to small-scale production runs.

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Chuck Hulls invention of stereolithography (SL or SLA) in 1986 took a different approach. This additive method built up objects in layers, creating a stack of wafer-thin slices to produce a three-dimensional form. Inside the first stereolithography machines, an ultraviolet laser fused the outline of each slice onto a thin layer of photosensitive liquid polymer, converting the liquid to a solid. The first layer mounted to a platform, which dropped by tiny increments, allowing fresh layers to build upon those below. When the finished model was lifted from the vat, excess liquid drained away, revealing the physical form. Early models were often quite crude, but some designers immediately recognized the potential of the new technology. Janne Kyttanen, founder of the Freedom of Creation (FOC) in Helsinki, created early lighting designs that featured complex and delicate undercut geometry that could not have been made any other way, by hand or by machine. Newer methods use the same principle to print forms in successive layers. Additionally, designers realized that additive printing could produce hinges and other small moving parts, fully assembled, in a single pass. In 2006, Patrick Jouin created the nylon One Shot Stool, which emerged from its production chamber furled like an umbrella, and then opened to full size on integral printed hinges. In 2009, MIT researcher Peter Schmidt printed an entire working clock. Current developments in 3D printing have widened the scope so that many such rapid prototyping systems can now handle the same range of materials as conventional manufacturing. Some printers use a kind of hot glue gun to trace out successive layers of thermoplastic; others (like the One Shot Stool) employ Selective Laser Sintering to fuse powdered plastics and metals into solid forms. Relatively inexpensive machines from Z Corporation use standard ink-jet printing heads to squirt liquid onto successive layers of dry corn starch; after the model hardens, the excess dust can be brushed away, and, if the printing heads are loaded with ink, the item can be in colour. It is even possible to print ceramics and glass, assembling a form from powder that can then be fired in a kiln. Mark Ganter, of the University of Washington, claims that if we could get a material into powder form at about 20 microns we could print just about anything. 3D printing supports combinations of materials unprecedented in conventional manufacturing. Some machines can print different types of plastic at the same time to create, for example, a box with hard plastic sides and a flexible plastic hinge, all in one pass. Laser-sintered metals can be fused into

lattice structures that carry as much strength as a solid form, but use less material, and weigh less. British manufacturer Filton uses 3D printing to make commercial titanium components for aircraft landing gear, in a form that could not be achieved any other way. Increasingly, 3D printed forms are creating finished products in their own right (plate 2). Inevitably, as the quality and versatility of the technology improves, the cost is dropping. Already, small plastic parts such as buckles can be digitally printed at prices that rival those of injection molding. This development path follows the classic model for all disruptive technologies: expensive at first, and unable to compete directly with established methods, they survive in a niche market long enough to effect improvements and reduce costs, and eventually overtake older systems in their core markets. Studying the market for computer disk drives in the 1980s, business researcher Clayton M. Christensen observed that newer products typically combined higher prices with lower storage capacity, but sold nonetheless in niche markets where their small physical size was valued. Surviving on thin profit margins, the new technologies incrementally improved until they eventually displaced the older models entirely. If digital manufacturing follows this pattern, traditional plastics makers could be facing a major shake-up. The predictability with which technology becomes smaller, faster and cheaper is now embraced by Moores Law, named for Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who first postulated that the number of transistors on a chip would double every two years. Even now, these new technologies are enabling the production of a great variety of articles in small runs, or even individually. Printing-on-demand offers everything from greeting cards to books, while the full range of conventional and digital 3D techniques offered by the new supply chain can manipulate materials that include durable and superfine plastic, acrylic, styrene, silicone and thermoplastics; industrial metals such as stainless steel and aluminum; precious metals such as gold and silver; organic materials such as cork and bamboo, leather and felt, textiles and cardboard; and even hardboard, plywood and MDF. In one sweep, Mashable (The top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture) identified fifteen Web-based suppliers that would variously produce anything from board games to textiles, observing that: Creating your own products used to mean a significant upfront investment purchasing a minimum amount of the product as dictated by the manufacturer, paying for warehousing, packaging, point-of-sale

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systems, and other overhead costs. And that was all before you even took a single order! Thankfully, for many types of products, print-on-demand technologies have made it possible for anyone to create and sell goods over the Internet with little or no up-front costs. Many of these sites will also set up a virtual shopfront from which to sell your particular goods. Complementary online boutiques such as Etsy (Your place to buy and sell all things handmade) offer an elegant shop window for unique, upmarket pieces, or small runs of exquisite goods. Early entrants such as CafePress (The worlds favorite place to find or make unique T-shirts and gifts) and Zazzle (We make quality custom products designed by you) simply applied customers own artwork to familiar promotional articles such as T-shirts and mugs, and provided the transactional facilities to sell these items online, only producing the actual merchandise after it was ordered and paid for. Now, anyone who can create a digital file can send a complete design to suppliers such as Pokono (The worlds easiest making system) or Shapeways (Passionate about creating) and receive their completed product by mail shortly thereafter. If the first one isnt quite right, you can tweak the files yourself, and order another one. You can even buy your own desktop 3D printer, currently for a few thousand dollars, and doubtless for less money with more functionality as demand grows. Or you could build an open-source RepRap printer, for about US$800 worth of parts, and use it to recreate those same parts to build more RepRaps. In 2010, with a desktop printer purchased for around US$2,000, Australian designer Luke Ritchie set himself the challenge of the 1 Day Product, going from sketch to sale; conceptualizing, developing and producing a new product a magnetic drill bit caddy and posting it for sale online within a single day. On another tack, in 2011 the Dutch firm Droog started selling design data in the form of digital blueprints that can be taken to a local supplier for fabrication. Droog argues that digital distribution saves money on transport and warehousing, and offers new opportunities to engage clients or customers in the design process. Where Asian sourcing brings tooling costs down, digital production makes tooling costs optional. Mass production is ideal for a vast range of manufactured goods, but new technologies create a wealth of opportunities for small businesses, niche markets, limited editions, customization, prototyping and

just-in-time supply chains. And, of course, with flexible new production techniques, new products dont have to be perfect first time. The new manufacturing model is fast, flexible, responsive, and cheap and it no longer has to cater to the masses. DesignDirect is free to approach small markets, perhaps even a niche market containing only a handful of customers. Manufacturing has entered a new era; entrepreneurship will never be the same.

New: The long tail

Mass marketing, like mass production, suits many products and audiences. But the power of the Internet has revealed how the potential of myriad micro-markets can now be addressed online. The concept of the long tail neatly encapsulates this powerful economic model. The term was popularized through Chris Andersons seminal article in Wired magazine in October 2004, and the book that followed in July 2006. Although many of Andersons examples are drawn specifically from pop music and the movies, the principle applies to virtually everything that people share or trade, from information and advice to goods and services. The critical insight is that, in markets of all kinds, there is typically a very high demand for a relatively small number of very popular things, whether blockbuster movies or basic foodstuffs. These high-volume sales have traditionally shaped the entire supply chain, from advertising budgets to shelf space. Conventional supply-and-demand dictates that it is most cost-effective to concentrate on the things that people want most, and to fit in a few specialist or niche offerings as circumstances allow. But those many, many other things that lack mass appeal have their own niche markets and these, collectively, represent an enormous opportunity for DesignDirect businesses now that the Internet and digital communications offer new channels to reach those niches. The long tail describes the graphical representation of this phenomenon: a huge peak at the start of the graph represents the high demand for a relatively few, very popular things (the short head); this drops off sharply to an effectively endless shallow line representing the low demand for a vast number of other things (the long tail). Where there are cost-effective means of satisfying that low demand, the slow steady sales of the many individual things in the long tail can, cumulatively, represent a substantial commercial opportunity. This is the breakthrough for designers and manufacturers who do not necessarily aspire to mass markets: there are now ways and means

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both of creating unique products in small quantities, and of reaching the niche markets to which they appeal. The Internet has facilitated a new order of communication between these micro-markets, enabling people with common interests to find each other online. Although they may share information or exchange opinions, these individuals usually never meet face-to-face. (Occasionally, of course, they do notably, in the transformation of singles clubs into the major social force that is now online dating.) Increasingly, special interest groups are also learning how to exploit collective power from a myriad of individual locations, for everything from online petitions to bulk buying. Tapping into these networks represents another rich opportunity for producers in niche markets to reach their target audiences, however widely they may be distributed geographically.

New: Diversified advertising

The apogee of American mass-market advertising is the Super Bowl, the final championship game of the National Football League (NFL) season, which now has only its own ratings to beat for the largest audience in American television some 111 million in 2011. Only unique live events, usually related to sports, can still command huge audiences all watching the same thing at the same time; the next nearest record in American television was set nearly thirty years ago, in 1983, for the series finale of M*A*S*H*. With the proliferation of entertainment media and channels, audiences are fragmenting, and while mass-market products retain their appeal, advertising is literally going to pieces in search of its consumers. The Internet and mobile communications are transforming the world of marketing, and the allied trades of publicity, advertising, fulfillment and customer service. Advertising is changing to meet the demands of this rapidly diversifying market, adjusting its messages from mass media broadcasting to narrowcasting directly to individual handheld devices such as cell phones and iPads. Savvy advertisers create media neutral content for use in an array of channels from Web sites, blogs and social networks, to targeted text messaging, reaching individual consumers in unprecedented ways. YouTube commercials may deliberately dumb down production values to achieve a faux amateurism that is calculated to make viewers feel that theyre seeing something more raw and genuine than a slick television campaign. Now the few can speak to the few, sharing their special interests without distractions from the many who dont care. A designer with a special product

to promote doesnt need a spot at the Super Bowl to get attention. Marketing, like manufacturing, is now cheaper and more accessible than ever. The Internet allows product news to spread in entirely new ways. There have always been unexpected runaway successes, such as Im NOT a plastic bag of fashion accessories designer Anya Hindmarch. But viral marketing takes on a life of its own. High-end blender manufacturer Blendtec created a uniquely successful marketing campaign using YouTube to distribute a series of comic videos. Each of these show the genial company CEO standing beside one of his blenders wearing a lab coat and safety goggles. Looking enthusiastic, he picks up an iconic product like a Nintendo Wii, and asks will it blend? Then he drops it into the jar of the waiting blender, and hammers the hapless product into a pulverized heap of steaming shreds. As well as establishing one of the most popular channels on YouTube, the company claims to have increased sales of their extremely expensive products by 700% within three years of launching the campaign.

New: Disintermediation
The common factor in digital manufacturing and digital marketing is disintermediation the removal of the middleman. Traditionally, retailing has served as a mediator to get the product from the seller to the buyer. Shops and stores offer a choice of products selected from the much larger range available from manufacturers catalogues or trade shows. Now, disintermediation dispenses with the reseller. Customers can visit suppliers Web sites directly, and order straight from the manufacturer. Disintermediation is a growing trend in virtually every sector. Savvy musicians sell directly to their fans from their own Web sites, bypassing record companies to produce singles and albums by themselves. Writers publish their own works online or through print-on-demand services such as Lulu or Xlibris, which offers a range of flat-rate packages to design, publish, promote and distribute paperback and hardcover books, e-books, photo books, CDs, DVDs, even artists portfolios. Young Chinese fashion designers can set up online stores for their personal brands on Taobao, and even start by selling a single garment to test the waters. For designers, the client has also been a sort of mediator, putting them in touch with projects, conducting research, and refining specifications. Above all, clients tend to control manufacturing and distribution, for the very good reason that they have the money and resources to do so.

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DesignDirect

It is now possible to achieve all this without the backing of a corporation. A designer, an inventor, or an entrepreneur with an innovative idea, can find a supplier to turn that concept into a product, at an affordable price in low volumes. The Internet offers a marketing channel that allows product designers to create and control their own brands, and to sell them directly to consumers, or through sites such as eBay, Etsy or Amazon. Online payment systems such as PayPal support small traders, while those with some volume can easily build transactional Web sites with credit card facilities. Packaging ordered online can be delivered to the door, while online postage and courier services complete the fulfillment cycle.

End result: DesignDirect

Any designer can now acquire the tools to produce, brand, and sell their own products directly. The key ingredients are vision and energy. This is the dawn of a new era in design and entrepreneurship DesignDirect.

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About the authors Roger Ball PhD

As a practicing industrial designer, Roger Ball has crafted iconic sports products for Burton Snowboards, Fisher-Price, Cooper Canada, I-Tech Sports Products, Brine, Bell Sports and Nike, winning an IDSA Silver Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America in 1998 for Skycap, the worlds first snowboard helmet. Over a 20-year teaching career, Roger has led design studios in North America, Asia and Europe. Now a Professor of Product Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Roger is Program Leader for the Masters of Design (Practices) and Leader of the Asian Ergonomic Lab. He holds an MFA from the Domus Academy, Milan, and a PhD in Ergonomics and Design from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands. His anthropometric study, SizeChina, created the first-ever 3D digital database of Chinese head and face shapes, winning many international awards, and driving new developments in a wide range of products for the Asian market.

Heidi Overhill MFA

A museum design consultant for more than 20 years, Heidi Overhill has created temporary and permanent exhibitions for clients including the National Gallery of Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Shania Twain Centre in Timmins, Ontario, and the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila. Now a Professor at Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada, Heidi teaches a variety of design studio and history courses. She holds a Bachelor of Industrial Design (BID) from Carleton University, Canada, and a post-graduate certificate in cultural history from the Royal College of Art, London, England, and recently completed an MFA at the University of Waterloo for a conceptual project titled The Museum of Me (MoMe) which was published in Canadian Art magazine. In 2011 she started PhD studies in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, seeking to understand the domestic kitchen as a cognitive structure.

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