Innovation and retail product developments

Gavin Tonks ,

The chance to use creativity to set products apart from the mundane, through images and colour use, is not only creative but stimulating , especially when they sell.

I am a creative, starting my career as a shoe designer and forced to leave the industry through the globalization of production in China. I have had to constantly reinvent my business and put new strings in my bow to stay relevant with markets and new challenges.

I have worked for people like Dr N Mandela to pop stars and large corporate retailers designing product in China India and South Africa. I have written articles and books on small business development and work has a mentor and design consultant from animation to images.

I have given this a lot of thought and have finally come up with something I did which was innovative.

Working in the South African market, is a difficult and taxing market place to be in, as consumers expect and demand a bit of exclusivity. The problem is they also demand price points which can only be achieved by volume production.

I designed for a Hong Kong based company and produced textiles, for the home markets. I designed product that required innovation and style but which could be sold to five independent chains each with their own identity. The problem we faced was that the minimum machine run per range was fourteen thousand meters which is far in excess of what the market would bear.

One of my strongest abilities is my colour sense. I was trained as a shoe designer so had a good feeling for cloth and colour. My innovation was to first reduce the market to basic best sells. I then took the colours I had selected eleven of them and played with the tonal quality of each colour.

The reason I did this was to eventually find a common warp thread. Normally textiles warp threads would be changed from white or lighter tones of the textile colour range to produce the finished product. As I reduced the warp thread to a single tonal colour that suited all eleven "stories" I had selected, we were able to produce a very detailed and intricate range of design and plains, which fulfilled the mandate.

Splitting the colour ranges meant that each of the chain stores retained the look and feel of their target client, but it also meant that clients could build the range across stores, and regional markets ensuring a bigger and better sell through across the different retailers, for us as the supplier.

The innovation also produced some fresh new concepts, which the market took to as being innovative and different.

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