Designing your way out of dark times
It’s good to focus on the positives so here are a few topline stories of companies who designed their way out of hard times:
In the 1980’s Swatch designed the Swiss watch industry out of trouble after it ran into a serious crisis when Asian companies swamped the market with Quartz Crystal technologies. Swatch has produced more than 350 million Swiss-made watches in tune with the latest trends in the streets, sports and fashion.
Net-A-Porter, an online fashion store, was launched at the peak of the dot com bust in 2000. It weathered the storm and its fresh, innovative website and considered packaging have seen the company grow from three people to over 300 with a turnover of £37 million.
Virgin Atlantic developed a new seat design in late 2001 at the time of the atrocities of 9/11 and rising fuel prices were adversely affecting the travel industry. They knew the market would return to strength and were well positioned on its return. ‘We knew the market was going to come back, when it did we wanted to have the best product on the market, everything slotted into place,’ says Head of Design Joe Ferry.