Friday, January 19, 2007

Designer and Businessman

Today at bisnis-smart maling list at Yahoo groups, i read Mr Sangadi posting about his will to start making a kid furniture.
This post quickly had my attention. So i reply to him, and offer my services to help him to design a better kid furniture.

Soon, i had his response to my offer.

To my surprise, i had a very positive response from Mr Sangadi.
But bellow that firstline, there is a statement that i already hear from time to time.
People is still wasnt sure to work with product designer.
And one of the main cause is the price they had to pay for the design services.

How we can solve this problem.
And i think we all have to.
Because this is for the sake of all product designer and the product owner too.

If the product owner cant have a innovative product, theirs wont sell good.
Or they have to spend more money on the production because their product doesnt developed properly.
This two things is really important these day, when we all over flooded with product, from many kind of design and function that are so cheap (relatively).

So they key success is a very well designed product - Because good design means good business !

On the other way around, if everything continue this way, things will get bad for product designer.

So what is the solution?
To be honest i dont have one.
But maybe first thing to do is both side must try to understand each other.
Businessman must respect designer work and the value of their concept.
Designer must understand businessman fear, thus they must create an exellent concept and more flexible when negotiate about fee.

Base on this, i have a tought about colaboraton concept between bothside.
Im thinking, maybe designer can give their concept for free at first.

And then, let the sales talk.

Maybe after some quantities of the product sold, then designer may earn his money in.
This could be royalti base or pay per concept base.

Is a win-win solution right.?

Businessman can have a good product with great value.
Designer can have more product portfolio, recognation dan at last something do keep their
lives going,eg, money :)


Well, it just a tought anyway.

But it could be work somehow.


What do you think?