Style Indaba 2015: most furniture and lighting brand names “will disappear in five many years” as the net revolutionises the way items are distributed, according to Italian industrial designer Stefano Giovannoni (+ interview).
Speaking to Dezeen at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town yesterday, Giovannoni said: “I believe the old planet of distribution is at the finish. This variety of organization has five years of lifestyle.”
Giovannoni, head of Milan-based Giovannoni Design and style, predicted that new web-based mostly brands will spring up that sell products straight to consumers, undercutting the charges charged by classic retailers by up to 50 per cent. “The long term will be based on taking goods from production right to the final user,” he said.
Related story: Furniture brand names “terrible” at marketing online
The outcome will be a dramatic fall in costs as new on the web brands with the assets to invest in high-volume, minimal-cost merchandise are capable to bypass distributors and retailers and pass on financial savings to consumers.
The markets for items such as furniture, lighting and bathroom items are already saturated, the designer argued, and the companies operating in these sectors have so far failed to create sturdy on the web presences or approaches.
To survive, they will have to take item distribution and retail out of the hands of third events and sell solely through their personal outlets, or sell discounted merchandise on the web.
The only layout brand increasing to the challenge so far is plastic-furnishings business Kartell, he argued. The Italian brand has embarked on an aggressive drive to open its personal merchants, such as ideas to open 50 outlets in China.
Designers require to start off acting more like entrepreneurs, Giovannoni mentioned, moving away from the present model whereby they jump from brand to brand, making products that are barely distinguishable from every single other.
“It truly is ridiculous to see all the companies today perform with the identical designers,” Giovannoni stated. “You can see the identical chair made by the exact same person on three different stands [at design fairs], with a tiny variation.”
As an alternative designers must adhere to the prospects of fashion houses such as Prada or Jil Sander, becoming their very own manufacturers and controlling every thing from merchandise to retail.
Connected story: Hella Jongerius calls for “new holistic technique to design and style”
“If we think about the last twenty years, the most fascinating experience has been created by designers who developed their very own brand,” he mentioned. “For illustration Tom Dixon, or Marcel Wanders with Moooi. These are, if we search back, the most interesting and worthwhile experiences in our context.”
He added: “The web offers [designers] more likelihood to enter into the market, so I think in the potential design and style could be something connected to our personal brand, like in trend.”
Born in La Spezia in 1954, Giovannoni, like most leading Italian designers, studied architecture before turning to industrial layout.
He achieved main success in the late eighties and early nineties designing products for Italian kitchenware brand Alessi, the place his cartoonish egg cups, corkscrews and cruet sets have sold in their hundreds of thousands and aided the brand move away from a reliance on stainless steel merchandise to brightly coloured plastic objects.
His Girotondo range of tableware for Alessi, which functions toilet-door-type stick figures of men and females punched into chromed steel bowls and trays, have sold 10 million units so far and produced €20 million (£14.5 million) in sales final yr alone.
He also made the ubiquitous Bombo stool, which he claims is the “most copied style solution in the world.” However he has given that stopped designing furniture, believing that market saturation helps make it hard for designers to add worth, and as an alternative focusses on industrial goods such as appliances, vehicles and equipment.
“Maybe we have arrived at a point where design can’t create additional value,” he explained. “So we have to move our exercise, our way of working, from the outdated way of working.”
He employs eight people in his Milan studio but is in the process opening an office in Shenzhen, China. The Chinese government is giving Giovannoni financial assistance to open the workplace, he mentioned, as component of a wider move to help Chinese organizations become manufacturers.
“They need to have design and style,” he mentioned. “This is the reason why the government is supporting the creation of our studio in China.”
Right here is an edited transcript of our interview with Giovannoni:
Marcus Fairs: Earlier you were saying that you believe the internet is going to severely disrupt the existing design manufacturers. In what way?
Stefano Giovannoni: I consider the old globe of distribution is at the finish. In the past, design and style and mass market place had been two separate worlds. Today, mass marketplace is the help that makes it possible for design businesses to survive. Distribution is modifying drastically. In the past, the distribution program was primarily based on 3 steps. There was a supplier, there was a company that sold products to shops, and then the shops offered to the final user.
Right now, this distribution system is completed. The future will be based on taking items from manufacturing straight to the final user. It signifies you have two possibilities as a company. One opportunity is to have your personal store and distribute straight by means of your shop. The second possibility is to promote on the web. These are the only possibilities for the long term.
Marcus Fairs: What will occur to the style brands that rely on outdated-fashioned distribution networks?
Stefano Giovannoni: I believe this variety of company has five many years of existence. I never believe they have considerably far more. Some of these firms are organising in the new way. [But] the internet can’t be an important way for them due to the fact it really is not compatible with conventional distribution.
Of program they use the internet but it’s not crucial to them. Some other organizations that are a tiny bit clever are generating new distribution channels based on their outlets. Kartell for illustration.
Marcus Fairs: But the other brands in the furnishings and lighting sectors for example will disappear?
Stefano Giovannoni: I believe these businesses will disappear in 5 years. This is my impression. But it’s not only an impression. Advertising budgets are going down gradually we never see a long term for these firms.
Marcus Fairs: What kind of new businesses will emerge to take their locations?
Stefano Giovannoni: Today is a extremely exciting moment due to the fact we are at the end of a single time period and at the starting of a new one particular. So probably we have a great deal of possibilities. The world wide web has not shown yet its potential.
But the web will be the marketplace of the long term. Contemplate that today we never have, except for a couple of big companies in China that are expanding so rapidly and have turn out to be the leading firms in electronics in China, we don’t have any business truly addressing the net enterprise. They mix their internet business with their normal company, which implies they will not use the net in the correct way.
I feel in the near potential numerous new companies will move in this path. I’m learning this type of business. 1 dilemma is that these days we have a whole lot of web sites but firms are not ready to sell goods on the internet. But I am certain in a quick time they will be prepared.
Marcus Fairs: What about price? The net can undercut bodily shops on cost. How do you get all around that?
Stefano Giovannoni: This is the purpose why the traditional market place will be minimize off. Simply because on the web you have the potential to promote at 50 per cent low cost.
Marcus Fairs: Will the world wide web imply that different varieties of products are productive – items that are cheaper to manufacture? Or will the existing classics locate a new existence?
Stefano Giovannoni: This is a tough argument. Right now the market place is saturated with products. Appear at furniture – but not only furniture since of program the marketplace for furnishings is special. If you make a plastic chair you require investment, but if you generate a wooden chair you do not need to have any investment so the access is really effortless. This is why in Italy we have 1000’s of companies generating wooden furnishings.
There is a huge gap among this kind of organization and a actual industrial firm. The gap is that the industrial business has to invest. To create a plastic chair for instance, it implies you have to invest €300,000 or €400,000 for the mould and the amount has to be at least 20,000 to 30,000 chairs per 12 months, otherwise you have manufactured a bad investment.
The circumstance for furnishings is certain – the market place is exclusively saturated. But also in other industry segments. For instance I was recently learning ceramic for the bathroom. If you take a search right now at the production we had in the last 20 many years, the distinction in between 1 company and one more is truly minimum so that market is also saturated. To do anything different you have to generate some thing a little bit unusual that will be challenging to have accepted.
In domestic appliances it looks the very same. Even if the design does not enter so deeply in domestic appliances, the marketplace is truly saturated and it is actually hard to develop one thing new.
The dilemma is a lot more general. Possibly we have arrived at a level in which design can’t create added worth. So we have to move our activity, our way of operating, from the old way of functioning.
Marcus Fairs: What do you think of the Layout Indaba conference?
Stefano Giovannoni: Here at Design Indaba, what was exciting was to pay attention to ideas. There is a good deal of space in world, the globe is so large for tips. But today you need to generate anything really certain, you have to enter into the market with a very clear idea and go deeper with power in your idea. If you have the appropriate idea and you have the vitality you will be profitable. This is far more essential.
Also the long term of style – I believe the usual system where a designer operates with diverse organizations is at the finish. Today it is a minor bit ridiculous. If you search at the style fairs, every organization – I am out of this variety of program since I by no means wished to layout furnishings. I reduce furnishings out of my perform from the beginning.
But it’s ridiculous to see all the organizations today operate with the same designers. And you can see the identical chair designed by the identical person on three various stands [at style fairs], with a little variation. We arrive at a point exactly where this type of method is a small bit ridiculous.
Marcus Fairs: What is the long term for designers?
Stefano Giovannoni: The part of the designer on a single side I think is to be an entrepreneur. On the other side, perhaps the trend model will be a attainable model for the long term. I imply, for instance, if we contemplate the last twenty many years, the most fascinating expertise has been made by designers who produced their personal brand. For example Tom Dixon, or Marcel Wanders with Moooi. These are, if we look back, the most intriguing and rewarding experiences in our context.
Also the net provides us a lot more chance to enter into the market place, so I believe in the long term layout could be one thing connected to our own brand, like in trend.
Marcus Fairs: There has been a whole lot of discussion just lately about the potential of layout in Italy. Do you feel the sector in Italy is in a various position to other countries or is absolutely everyone dealing with the very same risk from the web?
Stefano Giovannoni: In Italy we had a large dilemma. We had twenty many years of corruption and of program this was not only because of politics. All our cultural action has been distorted by our bad government. Italy was twenty years ago a extremely fascinating country, which has been destroyed by these politicians. Nowadays we have even now some prime degree competency in Italy, but we miss leadership in certain contexts. In layout for instance we are missing some position.
Marcus Fairs: The internet allows you to be very aggressive on value, so does that imply that the internet will expand a new type of merchandise? Shipping is a huge concern with on the internet retail.
Stefano Giovannoni: Shipping for instance is 1 fascinating argument. I believe in the long term there will be a great deal of possible for merchandise with a modest size, due to the fact shipping and storage are the highest expenses on the net these days. If you promote a smaller item it will be a lot easier.
Marcus Fairs: So the web will change the goods that we get? Will it change the landscape of the home or the office?
Stefano Giovannoni: I will not think so, maybe not the landscape. But it will modify totally our way of doing work and considering. This is normal, because the net means transparency. In the previous we essential to have visibility and we suffered a lot, businesses suffered a great deal, if we did not have visibility. Nowadays the net generates transparency in the world, so if you have the appropriate product then you can simply be profitable.
Marcus Fairs: Is not Ikea already undertaking what you’re talking about?
Stefano Giovannoni: Why Ikea is so profitable is simply because they optimised this method in the starting. They go right to the ultimate user – this is the explanation why they are so productive. Of course they are not so flexible as a style organization.
Related story: “All the design and style companies together make 10% of what Ikea tends to make,” says Vitra’s Rolf Fehlbaum
But in the finish Ikea, by studying from the items and study of design organizations, arrived at a specified the place it optimised the balance among top quality and cost, so they are of program quite competitive on the simple design.
Marcus Fairs: If you go to any style festival there’s thousands of young designers hoping to get their goods into production. Do they have any future if the markets are so saturated?
Stefano Giovannoni: I feel they can. I feel it will be more and more like this, but the internet will be the base for all these sort of pursuits. These designers could promote their merchandise straight.
Today we have a whole lot of confusion between real goods, which implies massive investment and amount, and items which are artistic, 1-offs. I think the two contexts are complimentary. For example in my house I have a whole lot of merchandise which are limited edition, but there are two diverse contexts.
What is genuinely intriguing, and I consider this is something to analyse deeply, is what do we suggest right now by a bestselling merchandise. In the past, ten to 15 years in the past, a bestselling solution was a item which could perform at the very best good quality and price tag, so was a solution to promote in enormous quantities – a genuine industrial design item.
These days, the bestselling items for companies are goods with a quite higher cost, which do sell not in huge quantities – a few thousand pieces – but the price is 10 times increased than in the previous.
So this nature of the bestseller has transformed completely in the final 10 many years. The problem these days is that the organizations don’t generate any a lot more genuine products. It would be quite exciting to investigate what happened within the organizations. But according to my encounter, 10 many years ago very good items, which could sell two to three million euros a year, were many. These days there are much less and much less. It indicates the market has reached saturation, that the business has no more the vitality to create and that the investment is reduced. This is a fact.
Marcus Fairs: You are opening a studio in Shenzhen, China. Speak about that.
Stefano Giovannoni: Today the Chinese government is pushing a good deal about design. They are really clever due to the fact they realize that China is the factory of the globe. They have so numerous organizations focused to manufacturing, to engineering. They have massive manufacturing. European companies talk a whole lot to Chinese companies to produce their organization to produce products with a larger top quality and now these organizations are prepared to turn out to be brand names.
So the next stage of this method – which is a vital process and is the cause the government understands why style is essential – is to move these companies from the role of producer and supplier to getting brands. And they need to have layout. This is the explanation why the government is supporting the creation of our studio in China.
Marcus Fairs: They gave you income to start an office in Shenzhen?
Stefano Giovannoni: Yes. They gave me the area. It is a really nice room in a creating designed by Tadao Ando. They also supplied me with funds for the restoration.
