Selling Design Solutions Instead of Commodity Materials

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Opportunity, then, must be its godfather.

And to paraphrase The Godfather himself (as portrayed by Marlon Brando), the furniture industry has been made an offer it shouldn’t ignore.

Material Intelligence organized a workshop during the Pan American Laminates Conference held in Toronto in early December. Created and managed by Kurt Fischer of Technical Conference Management (www.tcman.at), based in Vienna, Austria, both the Pan American and European Laminates Conference Programs have focused primarily on technical and production issues, new processing technology, etc. Design has slowly been creeping into these events, championed largely by yours truly. (In 2010, these events will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, 23-26 March, and Montreal, Canada, 27-29 September.)

The intent of the technical content is, of course, to help producers of decorative surfaces, panels, and furniture components improve efficiencies and increase their profits. And while these discussions are very important, they’re only one side of the coin. Better understanding the end market and the opportunities for expanding it is, to me, a much shinier side of that same coin.

For example, for a TFM producer upgrading processing equipment and streamlining the use of raw materials may net a savings of one to four percent. At high volumes, this is nothing to sneeze at, and will fatten – albeit ever so slightly – the bottom line.

Better understanding what the design community needs and wants, on the other hand, can net an additional 20 to 100 percent, perhaps even more. Straight to the bottom line. And every step of the value chain, particularly the furniture fabricators, shares in this windfall.

This kind of thinking, unfortunately, is a leap for our industry, because it requires selling our products on value, rather than on price. Establishing “value” means assessing and communicating what it delivers in terms of durability, beauty, ease of handling and installation, and environmental friendliness – which includes comparing our surface against whatever material or materials it replaces.

Our advantages have an inherent value, particularly to design specifiers, far beyond a “cost plus profit margin” formula. Unfortunately, for decades the sales story for laminates has been, “Well, it’s cheaper than veneer.” The current state of the industry is proof enough that we are paying the price for this short-sightedness.

Material Intelligence is working intensely with decorative surface suppliers in 2010  to develop a value-focused sales story. For starters, we must embrace a new way of thinking about our products, to wit: “We don’t sell materials, we sell design solutions. Materials can be commoditized; design solutions cannot.”

Which takes us back to Toronto. I used to think our value-oriented opportunities meant bringing better print designs, and especially better textures, to existing applications – furniture and interior surfaces that we already supply. But a presentation by Jaime Velez, principal of interiors for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (one of the largest architectural firms in the world) showed us many examples of additional applications that are crying out for fresh solutions: Textured interior walls, made from plaster, that are impossible to clean and too easily damaged; ceiling tiles with more visual interest; high-gloss surfaces more durable than lacquer; and even office workstation divider panels with more visual interest, that don’t get as dingy or dated as fabric.

Velez knows laminates – he has worked closely with Formica for years, and even designed the interior of their new corporate headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. (One of his more recent projects, by the way, is the Burj Dubai – the tallest building on Earth.)  He knows that each of these applications could easily be handled by engineered decorative panels, made with technology and materials we’re already using, with significant cost savings over what he’s currently specifying.

So here’s a world-famous architect, essentially making us an offer  – if we use our current methods and resources to create more surfaces he can use, he will buy them. Will we take him up on it?