What does it actually cost to build a hardware brand from inside a design agency?

In this episode of Why Design, Phil Staunton shares the belief that sits at the heart of his work: that product design is only as good as the honesty you bring to it.

Not just the honesty with clients about what their product needs, but with yourself about what you do not know yet.

Rather than staying comfortable in the consultancy model, Phil chose to put his own money into a consumer pushchair brand, take it to John Lewis, and learn everything he did not know about retail, merchandising, branding agencies, and the gap between a product that is well designed and a product that sells. That decision led to some of the most expensive lessons in this conversation, and some of the most useful.

This conversation is not about building a successful design agency.

It is about what happens when a designer bets on their own conviction and what it teaches them when some of that conviction turns out to be wrong.

Don't just listen. Go beyond the podcast.

Join the Why Design community -> teamkodu.com/whydesign

What You'll Learn

• 💸 Why spending 126,000 pounds on branding before validating your messaging can destroy a launch before it begins.
• 📦 How the economics of a design agency change entirely at the boundary between eleven and thirty-five people, and why most agencies stay stuck in the most difficult middle.
• 🏪 What John Lewis buyers actually evaluate when they decide to stock a new brand, and what happens on the shop floor that no one tells first-time consumer hardware founders.
• 🔧 Why forty-two post-launch product changes that cost real money moved zero additional units, and what that reveals about the difference between designer instinct and customer reality.
• 📋 The minimum viable approach to validation before tooling: how a fake buy-now button on a basic website outperforms any focus group or agency market research.
• 🧠 Why ignoring alarm bells on hires and new client inquiries never, in Phil's fifteen-year experience, works out.

Memorable Quotes

"We wasted a lot of money on branding. I think we spent 126,000 pounds with a branding company. And it just bombs."

"Never once have I kind of gone, yeah, okay, it'll be all right. I've got a bad feeling about it but I'll offer that person the job. Never has it worked out. It's always been a shit show."

"Set up a website with an ecom platform and get people to actually click buy now and then send them an email saying, really sorry, it's not quite ready yet. If people click buy now, they're genuinely prepared to spend money."

"I made way more money running a design agency that was under 10 than I did when I was trying to run a design agency that was 18 people. And I was a hell of a lot more stressed and I was doing a lot more work."

"I am a startup guy. And that's the bit that gets me excited. D2M doesn't want or need me. It doesn't need that kind of startup energy. It's a mature business. And that just isn't me."

Resources & Links

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube & Amazon -> whydesign.club

Join the Why Design community -> teamkodu.com/whydesign

Follow @whydesignxkodu on Instagram

Watch full episodes -> YouTube.com/@whydesignpod

Follow Chris Whyte -> linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte

Explore D2M Product Design -> design2market.co.uk

Connect with Phil Staunton -> Phil Staunton

About the Episode

Why Design is powered by Kodu, a specialist recruitment partner for the hardware and physical product development industry.

Through honest conversations with designers, engineers and creative leaders, we explore not just what they build but why they build it; the beliefs, decisions and responsibility behind meaningful work.

About Kodu

Why Design is produced by Kodu, a recruitment partner for ambitious hardware brands, design consultancies and product-led start-ups.

We help founders and leadership teams hire exceptional talent across industrial design, mechanical engineering and product leadership bringing structure and clarity to one of the hardest parts of scaling.

Learn more -> teamkodu.com

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) This is the first innovative pushchair brand in

20 years, the first new brand of pushchair

that we're going to stop.

I think we spent £126,000 with a

branding company and it just bombs.

Phil Staunton has spent 20 years in physical

product development.

He built D2M product design from a back

bedroom into one of the UK's most active

product design consultancies.

Over 1,600 projects shipped.

He also made his own hardware product, raised

three quarters of a million pounds, got it

into John Lewis and had the head buyer

tell him it was the first innovative new

pushchair brand in 20 years.

Phil's pushchair had more engineered features than anything

else in John Lewis.

His bill of materials was double what Bugaloo

was spending.

He got it into 11 stores.

He had buyers across Europe in the room.

And between his first batch and his second,

he made 42 engineering changes.

Our first batch of products, we made 400

units.

We then made 42 changes before we ordered

our second batch of products.

We had to order it really quickly because

of the John Lewis stocking requirements and whatever

else.

I don't believe that any one of those

42 changes any of our customers noticed.

And then we get to part the story

that Phil says has an easy answer and

a harder one.

Yeah, it's an easy answer and there's a

harder answer.

This episode is about the gap between design

excellence and commercial reality, about what happens when

a product earns the best possible validation from

the market and still runs into the hardest

possible truth.

We put all this design effort in.

We had all these patented features.

And customers genuinely would just buy product because

of the color or who they'd seen pushing

it because their neighbor had one or whatever

else.

And as a product designer, that was just

devastating.

This is Why Design.

Phil Staunton, welcome to Why Design.

Thanks for being on the show.

No problem at all.

Pleasure to be here, Chris.

Thanks for having me.

We've been talking about this for some time

now.

And we've finally, it seems like months and

months later, here we are.

It's nearly a year since we first said

we should do this.

Yeah, it has been a year like that,

though.

So it's finally great to take it down.

I'm stood up today for a change.

But let's dive in, shall we?

So Phil, you've spent the last 20 years

or so in physical product development.

You've built and grown D2M into one of

the UK's best known product design consultancies, shipping

over 1,600 projects.

And you've built your own hardware brands that

landed in John Lewis.

But before we dive into your background in

too much detail, let's go back to a

moment where everything shifted.

You're standing in John Lewis, Oxford Street, with

your pushchair brand on the shop floor.

What's the exact moment you realized you've actually

pulled this off?

Yeah, I think the exact moment was probably

about two months before that, when we sat

in Victoria at John Lewis headquarters with the

head buyer for Nursery, one of her team,

and she was like, yeah, this is the

first innovative pushchair brand in 20 years, the

first new brand of pushchair that we're going

to stock.

And we're excited to do so.

We want to build that launch campaign with

you.

We want to do a big rooftop party

on Oxford Street stores, part of the launch

and everything else.

And I think coming out of that meeting

with my team was just like, oh my

goodness, we've actually landed this.

And this doesn't happen.

New brands do not get into John Lewis.

New brands and pushchairs definitely don't get in.

So, yeah, we were over the moon.

And I really couldn't believe it at that

point at all.

What made you decide to innovate in pushchairs

then?

And how many other brands did you have

to pitch before John Lewis said yes?

I was for good questions in that.

So, we picked pushchairs because we'd already done

a couple of pushchairs.

We had good manufacturing contacts out in China

as a result of a couple of client

projects we'd done in this space already.

We'd also done some golf trolleys, so we

could really see the similarity.

We built up some real expertise in terms

of wheeled push products.

I just wish that was a bigger category,

but there we go.

And we thought, it's about time we put

our money where our mouth is.

But it's also a hugely commercial decision, so

I don't mind sharing candidly with you and

your listeners.

Product design agency is tough, right?

It's constantly kind of famine or feast.

You're constantly trying to keep the team, particularly

if you're an agency that's reasonable size.

As we were at the time, we were

18 people at the time.

Trying to keep 10, 12 designers constantly fed

with work is really hard.

And we're like, what we need here is

a different revenue line.

We need something that actually we can scale.

We need something that is not just going

to be this kind of rollercoaster.

And that's why we decided to develop our

own products at all in the first place.

And then, as I say, push chairs, because

we had some experience there.

Also, genuinely, I was really interested in designing

push chairs.

They are not easy, and I don't like

easy product design.

We've always done technically complex stuff.

There's mechanics in there in terms of the

folding mechanisms.

There's textiles, and we've got a textile team

at D2M.

So integrated textiles and hard goods we're really

good at.

There's metal work, there's plastic work, wheels, bearings,

all that stuff that I can get excited

about as a kind of technical, functional product

designer, basically.

So yeah, that was all the reasoning.

And I can't remember the second half of

your question now, Chris.

Oh, it was how many brands did you

have to pitch to, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we did a couple of consumer shows,

and we pitched to some of the smaller,

independent retailers before then to kind of cut

our teeth and learn what it was like

to pitch in front of a buyer, kind

of get our answers down to kind of

standard questions, make sure we could supply good,

ready answers and actually we were ready to

supply John Lewis.

And actually when it came to it, we

weren't.

But we thought we were at that point,

having done a few independents.

So we were probably in about six small

stores.

We've probably done something like kind of three

or four consumer shows by that point.

And yeah, so that was the time we

thought, okay, you know, let's go for this.

And was it your own branded product, or

did you kind of white label it and

brand it?

Mr. John Lewis?

Well, actually it's a hybrid.

And there's an interesting story there, because it

really shouldn't have been in the end.

So we decided rather than designing from scratch

that we would start with a push chair

that was manufactured by a factory we had

a good relationship with.

But there's lots wrong with the design.

And we're like, okay, we'll redesign it.

But what we'll do is we'll keep the

frame, we'll keep the folding mechanism.

We'll upgrade it to premium.

We'll look at the textiles.

We'll bring in some new features.

We had these kind of wheels that took

out all the bumps and a suspension built

in which were quite clever and all this

kind of stuff.

So, but actually in the end, there were

two fundamental flaws with that logic, even though

it did save us tooling cost.

Actually, fitting around their existing chassis cost us

more time than it would have taken us

to design from scratch in the end.

And also we lost orders because people were

like, we love all the premium features, completely

see how a premium buyer will buy into

that, but your folding mechanism, some of your

moldings or whatever, they're just not premium enough.

They just feel like a mid-range push

chair because obviously it was.

And we hadn't anticipated that actually the buyers

particularly would be that discerning.

I'm not convinced that too many end customers

that would look at the quality of a

folding mechanism molding and go, that isn't good

enough.

I'm not spending 900 pounds on that product.

But certainly the buyers when they reviewed it

from distributors in other countries and whatever were

like, no, that's not high enough quality.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Because John Lewis is a quantity retailer.

They didn't have a problem with it at

all, but we did certainly lose other orders

because of that.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, and I guess it's one of those

things that you might not necessarily go in

fully armed without that knowledge if you approach

it for the first time and then you

might assume that.

Yeah, good enough is good enough in a

lot of cases.

The actual end user, so long as it

works away, they're not going to pull you

apart on the mold quality.

I would have thought so.

I think equally, there's a bit of a

lesson in that as well in that we

went in in premium, so our product was

900 pounds.

Bugaboo at the time, depending on what model,

it was 850 to 1,000.

Stocker was maybe 1,000.

There was some high-end kind of eye

-candy models that were retailing at more like

1,600 and stuff.

Mima was about 1,200.

We pitched it in amongst the premiums, but

I think we shouldn't have done.

I think we should have gone mid-range,

more volume, and not had that level of

discernment from the buyers.

If we'd gone to those buyers and said,

this is a 750-queer push chair, they'd

be like, okay, that's top of the mid

-range, but it's not premium, and they wouldn't

be there measuring us against those other brands

that had taken basically a bog-standard push

chair, if you like, and pre-minized it.

Whereas we didn't.

We took a kind of mid-range push

chair and then put a whole lot of

genuinely useful features and upgraded the textiles and

stuff.

Our bomb cost was about $200 on that

product.

The Bugaboo at the time, their bomb cost

was under $100.

Us was a significantly more expensive product to

produce, even when you take into account volumes,

and they're not that high in premium push

chairs.

There's not that much of a discount in

it.

But as a customer, you're getting significantly more

for your money with our product.

But being in that premium price point did

just open us up to a whole lot

of scrutiny that we could have avoided, could

have not chased margin and chased volume instead

to hit our numbers and gone from there.

But equally, there's loads in that market that

was just really tough at the time.

Yeah.

But there we go.

And you mentioned that you obviously were taking

it to trade shows.

You met potential buyers there.

Were you taking a prototype to trade shows,

or were you taking essentially the finished product

and you were pitching that to the buyers?

Yeah.

So because we were working from a mid

-range kind of existing push chair, we were

able then to actually get effectively factory samples,

albeit potentially with some prototype parts, that then

looked the part for those trade shows and

those consumer shows.

We raised $750,000 with investment in total.

So we went into tooling.

And because we weren't tooling the whole thing,

we could go into tooling quite quickly.

So relatively rapidly, we were actually sharing sample

product as opposed to prototypes.

And it's very, very hard to get a

prototype push chair to work like a final

product, look like a final product.

So we had to get there quite quickly,

really.

Yeah, we've dived deeper than I expected to

on the opening question.

But it's super, super interesting.

I'm guessing, so what you're saying is, is

the key lesson there, or I wouldn't say

regret, but key lesson, it isn't necessarily that

you worked from an existing product.

It's more about where you pitched it then

because you're limited by the premium-ness of

it based on the donor chassis.

Yeah, I think so.

I certainly didn't realize until I'd gone in

and done the project that actually if you

pitch it premium, and it seems obvious, right,

but I wasn't thinking about it, you're going

to get a whole load more scrutiny than

if you pitched it at kind of mid

-range.

And that did make a huge difference.

I think there's lots of other lessons in

it as well, but certainly kind of chasing

margin and going, we want to make the

maximum we can per product early on.

It's certainly not something I ever advise my

clients to do.

It's like you've got to get market penetration,

you've got to get volume, you've got to

get that factory relationship in a good place,

and you're only going to get that as

in when you've got some volume going through

there.

It's easy to get back to investors and

go, look, we've sold a lot, we haven't

made much margin on that, and we've got

mechanisms for improving that margin over time than

it is to go to investors and go,

look, we haven't hit our numbers, we haven't

sold much volume at all, but we've made

loads of money on each product and they're

like, well, and?

We weren't in it for a quick return,

Phil, what we wanted to see is volume.

And if you can prove the volume, then

arguably they put more money in if necessary

to kind of then find those kind of

ways of improving the margin.

Of course, you've got volume as well, and

you can then negotiate with your manufacturers and

you can squeeze the margin there anyway.

Yeah, I think that was a big lesson

really.

Amongst a whole lot of others, we wasted

a lot of money on branding.

I think we spent £126,000 with a

branding company, and it just bombed.

So we launched that brand and that messaging

that they came up with.

Cologne, a massive international trade show, 30 buyers

from all over the world in the room,

and they just came up to us after

they went, love the product, don't understand the

brand, don't understand the messaging.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And that was a big well-renowned company.

We'd taken references, all that kind of stuff.

And yeah, it was horrible.

The amount of equity I'd given up to

raise that money to do that branding, and

then it was, yeah, not good.

So what would you...

I guess you've been down this path a

few times, have you?

It's kind of launching products, but what were

the key lessons or kind of takeaways from

that kind of experience of the branding that

you could share with others?

Yeah, I think just because the company's expensive,

just because they say they're good, don't believe

it.

And I think the mechanism I use now

with our clients is say, look, use minimum

viable branding in the same way that you

do minimum viable products.

Don't go all out and spend an absolute

fortune to do everything and all your brand

guidelines and whatever early on before you started

selling something because inevitably your messaging and whatever

will change.

And what we thought was going to land

and resonate with our customers didn't in terms

of the brand.

And I think I'd also say, you'd be

very, very cautious of any branding agency that

sits there and goes, no, no, no, we

know what we're doing.

It's like, I want the data.

How many of our target customers have you

run this messaging past and how many have

said, yes, I'll buy a product that says

that?

Or how many have said, I prefer that

kind of logo to this one?

And the problem is, a lot of the

time, certainly with my experience, the guys doing

the branding, there's a lot of arrogance there.

As a product designer, I wouldn't ever tend

not to say to our clients, it's got

to be this, this is right, I know

I'm right.

It tends to be, we're going to do

the market research, are we going to prove

it?

If the client doesn't want to pay for

that, well, that's up to them at that

point.

Clearly.

But I would always do branding now with

the target market involved at every step of

the way to make sure that you don't

end up, yeah, £100,000 plus down the

line and it doesn't work.

Well, I guess, you know, when you think

about the professionally trained storytellers, aren't they?

So they're in the business of hopefully kind

of bringing you on a journey and getting

excited about it.

So if you're personally invested in the product

and the brand, it can be easy to

see why you might get, yeah, swept up

in that.

Yeah, they were, they were absolute masters at

that.

So every time we hit a kind of

a milestone where they were revealing something or

whatever, it wasn't just our PINGO, PDF and

email, it's like come in for a meeting

and then a lot of nice coffee and

they've got blah, blah, blah.

And then it's all on huge boards printed

around the room and, you know, all of

that just, you know, it's all curated to

make you think this is great and not

question it.

Whereas actually, you know, what would have been

much more helpful in retrospect was something that

was less showy and more focused on and

actually functionally working with the customer.

Yeah, I'm just getting visions of mad men

now.

Oh, awesome.

Well, let's dive into the actual first question

I used to ask was, Phil, why design?

What drew you down this path, you know,

all those years ago?

What kind of pulled you into ID?

Yeah, it's a really good question.

So I was passionate about two things really

when I was kind of choosing A levels

and all that kind of stuff.

I was passionate about building models, so ready

controlled aircraft, boats, all that kind of stuff.

Passionate about building little mechanisms and motors and

battery arrangements for ready controlled boats and all

that kind of stuff.

And yeah, kind of just loving that and

love DT in school and naturally, I guess,

found that an easier kind of subject.

And the other thing I was really passionate

about, which I kind of didn't tell anyone

because it just wasn't cool.

And I'm still not sure whether it is

cool or not, but I think it's cooler

than it was.

You're going to commit it to a podcast.

Yeah, I was just really passionate about nature

and wildlife, basically.

Okay.

And I looked at careers in both and

if I wanted a career in wildlife, then

basically I was going to get paid tap

and safety in a couple of buttons.

I was going to have to volunteer for

10 years on probably no pay.

And everyone else in the industry was 65

in a wax jacket and a male and

white.

And I was like, yeah, actually, I'm not

really, I'm not for that.

So I went into product development and product

design instead.

Yeah, and now it's minus the wax jacket.

It's, you know, middle Asian white blokes as

well.

Predominantly in the industry design.

Yeah, it is a deal.

I didn't manage to get any greater diversity

in terms of the type of contemporaries I

was working with.

But I did at least manage to get

decently paid from the outset.

That's awesome.

I'm looking at your qualifications, you know, it's

classic, kind of maths, physics and DTA level

and then industrial design and technology degree from

Loughborough.

It's like, you know, if we were the

other way around, I was interviewing for roles,

I'd be able to open my client book

for you because it's, you know, that's the

classic foundation what we look for, you know.

So, yeah, great kind of starting point.

To talk us through kind of those early

days then, you know, coming out of university,

did you know what you wanted to do?

Was there kind of a, obviously, it wasn't

nature at that point, it was going to

be design, so...

Yeah, yeah, I was very clear.

Yeah, very clear from from age of 14,

15, you know, having decided I was going

to do design rather than kind of conservation

or anything, I was like, right, okay, what

items do I need to do?

Exactly like you said, where's the best university

in the country?

And I went and made sure I got

a first from that university, basically, and then

made sure I got a job, did everything

I could to kind of do that.

And then, you know, I think even in

my yearbook at kind of sixth form, kind

of leaving, I was like, I'm going to

start my own kind of agency.

It's probably because I'm just really not very

employable, don't lie being told what to do

and tend to think that other people are

making the wrong decisions.

So, I was always aware that I probably

wasn't going to be able to work for

anyone else for too long.

At least, yeah, you were able to reflect

on that.

And I acknowledge, I think funny people go

through life wondering why they're not progressing because

they just don't work well under authority.

I think that softened quite a lot now

and I think having spent 15 years running

my own show, having exited the business kind

of at Christmas, I'm very excited about not

having to be the person in the room

all the time that everyone looks to, everyone

wants to start the meeting, who takes responsibility,

who's constantly worried about cash flow.

Well, you know, until a couple of years

ago when things really took off at D2M.

So, I'm quite looking forward now to that

and I'm certainly much more open to work

for someone else.

As an arrogant kind of, you know, 20

-year-old mid-20s or whatever, I thought

I knew better and, you know, I wanted

to be steering the ship, I guess.

Yeah, no, it's funny how things, how perspectives

change over years as well and just we

evolve as managers, as leaders, as employees as

well.

So, I've definitely become more zen as I

get grey hairs and, you know, I think

I interviewed Will Butler Adams from Brompton last

year and one of the things that, I'm

going to sound very AI now and I

say one of the things that stuck with

me but seriously, one of the things I

said is like, well, did anyone die?

You know, if you made a decision, did

anyone die, I'll get hurt.

If not, then, you know, that's fine.

Just learn from it and move on, you

know.

And so, yeah, whenever kind of, I've got

someone in my team that's, you know, worried

about making a mistake or they've maybe put

a typo on an email, it's like, no

one died, you know.

Next week no one's going to remember that

typo or, you know, whatever you've done, it's

fine.

So, I'm definitely getting more zen.

A few years back I might have lost

the spot because I was obsessed about detail.

Before we dive back in, this one is

for founders and CEOs building physical products.

If you're thinking about hiring a VP of

product, chief product officer or head of R

&D, this is not just another hire.

It defines how your roadmap is set, how

your teams are built, and how your company

competes.

At Kodu, we specialize in securing senior product

and engineering leaders for hardware businesses entering their

next stage of growth.

Focused, discreet, high-consecurities.

If that decision is on your horizon, find

me, Chris White, on LinkedIn, and let's talk

again.

Well, yeah.

So, we'll talk, so you kind of start

in D2AM.

Obviously, we'll talk about kind of where you

are at the moment, but in a moment.

You grew D2AM from nothing, essentially, at a

fairly young age as well.

You turned it into quite a serious operation

where you're developing products not only for clients

but also for the business.

What was the first decision, you remember, that

made it feel like a real business?

Was there a moment there?

Yeah, I think when we employed our first

member of the team, and it wasn't just

me in a back bedroom, and that was

only about three months after starting it, and

it was an incredible kind of growth rate

initially.

I'm not sure, in retrospect, I'd take much

credit for that.

I think there's lots of good tailwinds at

that point in the industry and whatever else.

So, I'm not arrogant about it, but it

did grow very fast.

It was 2010, wasn't it, when you started?

2010, I was 28 or something, and got

our first clients very quickly.

None of that really felt like a proper

business because I was still working in my

back bedroom or whatever else.

We then moved into shared offices.

It was really looking at CV and going,

yeah, that's the person we're going to interview,

and then going, okay, we're going to offer

them a job.

At that point, it was like, oh, actually,

this is working, this is bona fide.

I had some help starting the business as

well in the shared offices that we weren't

paying for and some kind of capital to

start it.

Not as much as I said we needed,

but nevertheless, it was still something.

At that point, it felt kind of real,

really, and someone else's mortgage was dependent upon

me being able to bring in enough work.

Yeah, it does make it real.

What triggered that first hire then?

Was it just demand from the clients or

were you?

Yeah, it wasn't even a designer kind of

hire.

It was basically kind of office manager.

Okay.

Yeah, so many inquiries coming in, so much

to kind of handle in terms of proposals

going out.

I was doing the design work and it

was like, it doesn't make sense for me

to be, well, I can't spend all week

dealing with proposals and new inquiries and then

all weekend doing five days worth of billable

work, that's not going to happen.

It was obviously cheaper and easier to hire

in an office manager than it was to

hire a designer first off.

Within two years, we were four designers and

a part-time kind of proposal writer and

stuff as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, it did grow very rapidly.

Yeah, I'm reading Buy Back Your Time at

the moment.

I don't know if you've come across that,

but literally the mantra is look at the

tasks that you perform on a daily, weekly

basis, which ones are high-value tasks that

you do exceptionally well and that only you

and the business can do exceptionally well and

then delegate as much as humanly possible, employ

people who are awesome at those not so

high-value tasks because otherwise, yeah, you just

find yourself being busy all the time.

Yeah, and that is the story of D2M,

that is the story of the 15 years

of building D2M.

We recruited a designer, probably a guy you

know, Rupert Worries relatively rapidly and I was

like, this guy is just so far above

what I could do design-wise.

That's the type of person I want to

employ.

I don't care that he's way better than

I am or I feel kind of inferior.

But he's working for my clients and helping

me build my business.

Well, great.

And I look at the guys now and

I tried to do some CAD this morning

because I'm still kind of finishing off a

kind of project.

So I was like, this is just a

waste of time.

I'm just light years behind my team.

So I just popped into the office and

briefed one of the guys on it and

he needs six hours later.

I've got something that would have taken me

probably the best part of three days and

it's much better.

And that's what I've done the whole way

through and I guess having delegated for 15

years, eventually got to a point where I

had a team that didn't really need me

and actually then realized that they'd be better

off without me, in fact.

And I was actually kind of holding them

back in some way.

But I only achieved that and only managed

to move out of the business and not

very many people do actually manage to found

the business, grow it and get to a

point where it can survive without them.

But that delegating and that employing people much

better than I am was the only reason

I managed to actually kind of do that

pretty.

Yeah, so it's awesome.

Like I say, especially in a small kind

of creative services business, creative problem solving business,

you often find the founder, I'm in the

same boat here, it's like we do things

really, really well and to our standards and

it's very difficult to let go.

But you can condition that muscle, can't you,

to delegate and once you do, that person's

awesome at that and...

There's been a lot of the way that

work also though, I have to say.

When we were kind of 18 people, it

was really hard to employ middle managers to

a point where we actually shrunk the company

and said we're just not going to try

again.

So we had, I think, three kind of

studio manager, design managers kind of in a

row and don't get me wrong, they weren't

all bad at all, but it didn't work

in the way that I thought it was

going to and some of that was probably

me and me needing to grow and get

more zen.

You're so afraid.

But equally, I think it's very, very hard.

I think that's one of the reasons that

I wouldn't start a design agency again is

because there just is not an abundance of

middle managers.

I've been to quite a lot of business

talks over the years, one recently, a guy

that runs kind of farm attractions so a

completely different sphere, but he's really successful and

doing very, very well, making lots of money.

But one of the reasons is that he

basically spends most of his time raising middle

managers, putting them in place and then taking

his hands off that bit and then raising

the next one.

It's all very well, but in an industry

where 90% of the businesses are five

people or under and therefore don't have any

managers, there's just no pool of physical product

design managers to draw on.

It just makes it very, very difficult because

basically you're having to train someone who has

kind of cultural impact on your business who

is unlikely to have experience in physical product

development.

I just found it very difficult and equally

we tried to kind of raise designers up

to become managers and designers, some of whom

didn't want to and we said, well, we

think you've got that ability and others who

wanted to, who didn't have that ability and

it has just never worked for me at

all really and that's been one of the

challenges and one of the reasons that we

didn't pursue a growth trajectory beyond.