WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM

TWO RENOWNED INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS, SHAHAR PELEG AND YENWEN TSENG TALK ABOUT PRODUCT FUNCTIONALITY, DESIGN AND ITS ACCESSIBILITY TO PEOPLE AS A PART OF THE RECENT BANGKOK DESIGN FESTIVAL SUPPORTED BY THE DITP, MINISTRY OF COMMERCE

Doonyapol Srichan: Firstly, for you Shahar, do you remember the first time that your product was launched on the market?

Shahar Peleg: Yes, it was in 2004. It was a chain bottle holder and I made just only one during a semester in school. A lot of people liked it and asked me, ‘why don’t you sell it?’ So I went to a local design store that had just opened and showed it to them and they agreed to sell it. They said if someone buys it, we will pay you. The next day, they called and said that they wanted another five, and then it was another ten pieces. So that was the first one; that was the start.

DS: In 2004, your idea was very fresh and not that many people were playing with that kind of idea to make the design more fun because you had learned that simplicity was best, so what was the difference? What was the feeling when your first idea came out and was sold?

SP: The feeling was very good. It was a very warm welcome because the feedback was very surprising. At the beginning there were only 2-3 stores and they would place it at the front because it was very eye-catching and sold very well. There were things that I didn’t know in the early years, but the products that I made were something that I liked and other people liked them too. I didn’t know what the market was demanding; I didn’t know anything about trends. I did what I liked and that was it.

DS: As we saw in your presentations, you two have very different design approaches. Could you please explain your design process before a product is launched?

Yenwen Tseng: For the first collection of products, I give the designers a brief, so mostly it’s based on the experience of the international designers that we work with. This is why I like to work with different designers of different backgrounds. 90% of the time I stay in Taiwan and the experience I have is that of being always surrounded by similar stuff but through this kind of collaboration, I get to invite designers with different experiences and insights to work with our brand. It makes our brand more vivid and dimensional. For the second and third collections, I have more discussions with the designers. I don’t exactly tell them what I like or want, but we start talking about what they like and if we find something interesting we keep going further with it and find the solution. So it’s more about personal experience.

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DS: Having worked for more than 15 years in the design industry and having created many products, what do you do when you get stuck, especially in a time when it seems like everything has already been done?

SP: We launch products once a year so for a few times during the year we work on the launching of a new product and each time, we think about how can we continue from here because once we have all the ideas on the table we have to start all over again. It’s always hard in the beginning but it’s not just about waking up in the morning and having a new idea, it’s about working on having ideas to pursue as research, to see what the market can offer and what is missing. Sometimes, I think it’s about how to look and see how we can improve things and make them better and this comes from our everyday environment. We look at everyday life and see how we can make it a bit better or maybe with a smile. Not everything has to be innovative but I think all products have to create an excuse to be alive. We try to not only make products, but for every product we look at the reasons why we should create them. I think that for many ideas, the more than one hundred that we have each year, we just narrow them down and there are only a few that are good enough to make it to the market.

DS: During the past four years, I’ve seen a great number of Taiwanese designers whose works have been recognized not only in Asia but also in the international market as well, and I’ve heard that the industry has been getting a lot of support from the government. What makes Taiwanese design unique or different from other countries?

YT: I think it’s related to our nation. Taiwan is really good at production. It’s kind of like the position that China is in today. I think all designers notice that Taiwan has good resources for production so more and more designers try to have brands in Taiwan through collaborations. For the design industry in this country, it’s good to see more and more brands coming out and more designers trying to develop brands at the international level.

DS: What particular aspect of your background has shaped your design principle or philosophy?

SP: I think that this may be the biggest difference between myself and other designers. First of all, I didn’t study industrial design, I studied interior design, and so I came from a field that is more about architecture. Therefore, I know more architects than product designers and my inspiration comes from other places. So in high school I studied electronics and physics and I learned about the sciences. I think from my point of view, compared to my classmates, they were more interested in drawing and building and I was more about numbers and physics. When I was 15 or 16, I was a magician and I would go to perform at birthday parties. I liked the unexpected elements and that influences my design a lot.

DS: Do you or how do you know that a certain idea or design will work?

YT: If I can get it right two times out of ten, I think that is good enough. I’ve always told the designers and co-founders that we need to design based on what we like, especially if you’re a designer, you need to have reasons to support the idea and I think other people will then believe in it too.

DS: From the countless ideas that you have, how do you choose which one to take forward through production and launch on the market?

SP: We have a very strict process for that. First of all, we have a meeting for designers and we talk about the ideas that we have from the inside and outside because for the last 3-4 years, we’ve collaborated with designers from around the world who send us their ideas. So we take their ideas and our ideas, and just talk about everything and see which one has the best potential. We take about fifty products that we think could become good products and we make a very good presentation – printing, photo shoots and rendering – and create a book with 40-50 new ideas. Then, once a year, I meet with my distributors who are my big clients and we show them our potential ideas. They look at everything and give us insights about what they think is good, what price they think products should be and we then take all of that information and if eight out ten distributors think it is a good product, we move on with it. If six think it is not and four think it is we won’t do it. So there are a lot of obstacles on the way for the product and if it passes everything, we move on with it.

AUDIENCE: Do materials become somewhat of a limitation when it comes to the production process, how do you get your ideas across when there are certain limitations that come with the materials and the production?

SP: For us it starts with ideas. We have a few materials such as silicone and plastic but we also have metal, ceramics and glass and I think basically, for us, the idea is the most important thing. We look for the right material to make this idea even if it’s a material that we’ve never worked with before. We try to find the factory that can make this product because we want the idea to have the best shape and material that is the most suitable for this specific idea. If it’s plastic, silicone or metal it is easy for us as we have factories that we work with but if we need to use other materials, we just look for factories that can do it and that makes our range of materials wider.

YT: For us, we focus on something that we do best, our strong point. And we try to find a different advantage to bring this strong point to another level. So at least maybe for the next five years, if this way of collaboration works, of course we can expand to other materials and work with other factories.

AUDIENCE: For a designer, intellectual property is very important but you see all the popular brands are being copied, so how far do you pursue the copyright issue as a brand or a company?

SP: I think you’re right; it’s very hard to do. And I can say this to you now that this is a war we can’t win. We won’t win but if you want to fight, you will lose. I have people working and reporting on alibaba to remove copies. You’re right, the design patent doesn’t cover the whole world so we choose the better markets like Europe and Israel and we invest in those markets. I can tell you that it’s very hard to sell a copy in design stores in Europe. Most of the copiers, they don’t change the design, they’re taking it as it is. The way they do it is that they take our photos and offer them and wait for a client to order some 5,000 pieces. Once they have the order, they manufacture them. They don’t have any stock. So it’s very easy for them to offer designs from our company and not have any stock. As they usually use the exact design, the patent covers us in 95% of these cases. If we stopped watching for just one month the Internet would overflow with copies so the tools that we use to fight them are suing the company if we need to, even with amazon, which is our largest client on earth but we have to do it because otherwise it will follow us. They’re the big fish and we’re the smaller fish. We do hope that we can find a better solution with amazon because we’re not interested in earning money from lawsuits. So we’re doing it in many different ways. Like I said, I know we cannot win, but we have to keep fighting because otherwise, we might have to close the business.

AUDIENCE: You mentioned the production in China, but before you produced works elsewhere; does having your products manufactured in China devalue or affect your brand in any way?

SP: I think it depends on the quality. You can have costs of one or ten dollars. We have been working with factories for many years now and they can provide us with good quality products. We used to use manufacturers in Israel in the beginning prior to moving production to China; we had better quality and the costs were more. We talked about fakes before and the faked products sell for less than half the price, so you can make the same product such as a thinner or smaller magnet to save costs, but we as a brand make the product as it should be. We do try to save costs, but we make the products of the best quality that we can. It costs a bit more but we can achieve a very high quality. It took us years to get there but we do have good quality products.

AUDIENCE: I’m a small manufacturer from India and my question is, if I make a small artifact product and copy that artifact onto a larger one that is your design without knowing you as I received the design from my client, and I need to make a big sculptural piece in the size of 6 -8 feet, in that case, can someone sue me for that or not?

SP: Basically yes, because the design patent is not about the size or color, it’s about the shape. Say for example if you were to make a larger version of Coca Cola bottle, Coca Cola can sue you for that because the shape is the registered design of Coca Cola. Basically, not knowing is not enough for not being responsible. I get this question a lot, and they ask me ‘how could I know?’ and I don’t know the answer for that because I cannot tell the whole world that this is my design but it’s the responsibility of the manufacturer and companies, distributors and importers to know what they’re producing because everybody knows a fake iPhone when they see one. They should be responsible for all the products they’re making or importing and there’s no one particular way to know everything, you have to check. In our case, you can Google and you will know it right away. I’m not the judge who can say what’s right or wrong, because there’s a case where the difference was very little but the fake can still look very familiar to the original. So just make new designs, it’s better.

DS: From your experience, what is the best advice you have ever received?

SP: When I started, there weren’t a lot of brands that made these kinds of products so I learned by myself. But if I can give some advice to young designers, I have two suggestions. One is to always try to do things and don’t just wait for things to come to you because no one is going to come knocking on your door, asking to see your sketches and saying that, oh they’re nice, can we manufacture them? You have to take your product into stores or work with companies that you want to work for. Not only in my field, but if you’re active you can achieve more. Opportunities are there for you to pick up on otherwise they will just go away. The other thing is to always look around. People have been looking at their cellphones only and they don’t look around, they don’t see what’s on the street. What I see now when I’m alone, traveling, just sitting, looking at people, seeing how they behave, how they eat, just looking around and trying to observe as much as you can is important because inspirations are all around you, they’re not just on Facebook or design blogs. Everybody looks at designboom or the same websites so if you want to have different inspirations, look at different things.

DS: Do you have any last piece of advice for the young designers?

YT: According to my own experience, I like to take photos of trashcans so I have these kinds of photos in my computer and it’s very interesting to think about the stories behind these trashcans because they are from all different places, like airports, train stations or other countries. So keep observing. When I moved back to Taiwan, I could not do the kind of design that I did in Sweden. So the things around you are very important to your creativity. There’s a quote from a book that I really like ‘When you do it smaller, your market will be bigger.’ Now everything is possible and you can find a way to do it, but maybe it’s more important to find a small and niche place for yourself.

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