Place to discover tomorrow's talent today

Last week went to the East London Design Show, apparently, according to the Guardian, this is the event to discover tomorrow's talent today.  I felt it was more of a place to  buy Christmas cards and Christmas presents.  Not many furniture companies, in fact only two, but if there were more, I would not have had such indepth conversations.

First of all, I have met an amazing guy who has been designing furniture for M&S most of his life and he gave me good idea on the industry challenges and potential costs of prototypes.  He has just teamed up with another person who is covering mass production and distribution (they have already placed some of their products with http://www.futoncompany.co.uk).  From his partner, I learnt about the painful process of selection of manufacturers, and I am still a bit shocked with regards to the costs of batch production - I really did not expect each chair to cost £200 if you do a batch of 100 (small batch = high cost).  And we are talking about the Baltic countries, not even the UK where labour is extremely expensive.  That means that before I even think about any marketing, packaging, delivery or admin expenses, I will need to pay £21-23k just to design and manufacture a batch of chairs.  So it looks that I will need to find buyers before I do batches, otherwise the economics just do not work.

Then, I talked to a lady who even does not produce chairs - she finds old stuff (which is not valuable antiques, but some mass produced 50s armchairs supplied mostly from Germany), and then reupholsters them with fabrics from young modern fabric designers and sells the chairs on for £500-1200 a chair.  On top of that, she has got an amazing marketing green story of sustainability and upcycling as she not using new timber or electricity.  Just brilliant.  Again, this is not new, but we are more used to restored valuable antiques, so she is basically turning old rubbish which is not that rare into gold.

Anyway, what an amazing day.  Both companies have kindly agreed to discuss potential future co-operation.  I have got an invitation to their workshops.  I cannot wait to follow up with them and see what we can do together and what else I can learn from these creative, resourceful and inspirational people.

Just in case you have got interested:

http://www.galapagosdesigns.com/

http://www.fowlerco.co.uk/

NB:  http://www.eastlondondesignshow.co.uk/  could be a good place to launch the business next year if we decide to go ahead with it.  Need to explore other events as well.