Episode 8 The Bottom Line

Bells told to mark the exact moment. He is often ranked amongst the

nation's most revered leaders. Now it is time for the Bottom Line.

For many of us, the closest we get to personal creative expression is

in the way we choose to decorate our homes. We wanted to be as individual

as possible, but we also want to follow the latest fashion. The

business of helping us to that is the topic of our discussion today,

design and decoration. It is all ended fickle consumers. Each week,

influential business leaders gather in London for the BBC Radio 4

programme the bottomline. You can see it as well as hear it. `` the

Bottom Line. I have three people with the steeped

in the well`designed. Kelly Hoppen, founder of Kelly Hoppen Interiors.

The president of Graham and Brown, and Lois Jacobs, the global chief

executive of which, a design agency. We'll take a few moment is to meet

all of you. Kelly, tellers about your company. What is it consist of?

The company I started at 16 was the interior design company, which is

the mother of the business, where we run anything from 50 to 60 projects

at one time. Then we have the publishing side, liberal outlooks

every two years. We choose 12 projects from a rather well. We have

a school, we have product design because we have products and shops

franchise to run the world. It is anything to do with design. Give us

the story of how it started. You hinted at 16. At 16, I was offered

to do up a kitchen for stepfather's friend. Then I had a friend who was

having a relationship with a famous racing driver. At 17 had my own home

because my father had been killed in a inherited money. I bought myself a

home. That is where my style began. He saw it and said he would like me

to do his home. The racing driver that is. It was the first proper job

in central London. From that, I got more Grand Prix racing drivers and

built the business on that. The passion and love of design was

really there from the very early age. The interior design business,

and that the super rich. It is hundreds of thousands, your

clients. The millions. I have filtered down, so we sell on. We

will be a little sell directly to people. I think that you have to

build a brand at the high end is to be a water filter down. And it is

very successful, because it become the authority of what you do in your

brand and what you sell. You can defuse your style and sell it to the

masses, which is what I have always wanted to do. Sitting next to you is

Andrew Graham, you designed for them. I do. Tellers were typical

designed for him would be. I went in and said, this is what I want to do.

They have a whole team who sit there are drawing and do things. I say, I

do not like that, but I like this, and they created. I will talk to and

`` in a moment. They design of? I give them designs and the mood

board. E to explain it. I was looking at Chinese screens is an

idea for a texture. I would then put a board together of all of this, and

the to them, they want to make the moral light is that people can paint

a colour onto this, so it was almost like a raised texture. I would say,

can you physically do this? So it is a collage of ideas? From then I

would sketch and handed over to the team. They then bring it to me and I

say, I want this smaller, eager, wider, do not like it, throw it

away. He recovers I want `` here are the colours they want. A guided, and

I do not know how to physically make a wallpaper. You also designer

wallpapers. The advantage to your getting Kelly Hoppen... Design is

about collaboration. You learn from each other. For them to be able to

work with designers like Kelly is a real experience for our brand and

people. To tell you about Graham and Brown. Enough Kelly Hoppen. Graham

and Brown is 67 years old, it is two families. We are third generation.

It was founded by my grandfather, Harold, and his best friend Henry

Brown. We are now a global decoration brand. We sell our

products to 75 countries around the world. Our third guest is Lois

Jacobs of Fitch, no relation to Abercrombie and Fitch, or to the

global ratings agency. It is a design agency. It helps other

companies improve design. It is not just interior design. We are about

branding and retail design. Were our interior designers come into is

designing stalls were different clients. Sue have had it a lot of

clients, he had helped them in China. While Kelly's brands defuse,

we tend to start that middle mass market and penetrate it. That is

what we focus on. We spend a lot of time looking at trends in the market

or throughout the world. About 10% of our people spend their time

observing what is happening through the world and how people shop. A

great job. It is. We have heard some things that will pick up on. We will

look at the peculiarities of consumer taste. They want to be

different, but they also want to be the same. I wonder how you cope with

consumers. You think people want to be different? I think people copy

looks and brands in interior design 100%. In a way, that is upsetting to

me. I am always trying to get people to be more individual. The amount of

times people will say, I want this look, the whole thing. But we do is

create these looks, photograph them, to make life easier for people.

Reassurance is important when you are dressing yourself all your

walls, Jules want to play a role in individualised and that. If you put

a look together, think about how you put it together. You can still

choose elements of Outlook. That is the personalisation. You have the

reassurance that the look goes together. People want that

reassurance. We are seeing democratisation of design, it will

to the mood boards that you create, individuals now create their own

mood boards. They used Instagram and all of these kind of social media

tools. I think there is that balance. They want to feel that they

have had some influence and that it is their scheme, with the

reassurance that the brand gives them. What we are finding is that

brands are creating ways to allow people to do that. The model that we

created in China is a multistage process. The first thing is that

customer draws from lots of sources on the website. They then go to the

store and they are given a coach to help them with all the source

material that they have drawn on. In China, it is particularly important.

What people in China need that? In China, the result a DIY market like

there is in the UK. They have got the mercy of lots of independent

contractors who might rip them off, might copy substandard products.

They go for the complete reassurance of the whole offer. You have some

interesting projects in India with Asian paints. Asian paints is the

largest paint manufacturer in India and that part of the world. The

amazing thing you find in India, which is a country and the people so

well known for their love of colour, they are absolutely terrified of

using a colour in their homes. It is only relatively recently that this

increase in the affluent middle`class has had the luxury of

thinking about colour in their homes. Our client was very future

minded and took two stalls on the main shopping streets in Mumbai and

Delhi, where you can buy anything. You can not buy any painted all,

because they sell through dealers. You go in the store and haven't a

digital card is eager to the store. You look at different paint

techniques, you see them in action, you bring photographs of your home

and you can have an augmented reality look at what different paint

finishes would look like. They are the team at biggest stores where you

cannot buy anything. The deal is adjacent to our happy. I think this

is brilliant. Online is so incredible now. The fact that retail

on the ground is now going all out to try and get people back into

stores, it is this fantastic thing, it is driving. I never thought that

would happen. It is such an exciting time to be in retail. These are

specific trends, but sometimes they turn against you. Andrew, your

business had a bad time in the 1990s. Tell us what went wrong

there. The paper became terribly unfashionable. That was in the

1990s. What we were doing as an industry, we were by no means the

market leading to be that we were, we were trying to interpret paint

effects with wallpaper. If you consider that as a concept is crazy.

Paint effects, like as lunge painting? It is probably the biggest

shift we have made in our company's history. The camera with the phrase

that the definition of madness is doing the same thing time and time

again, and we liberated our team to start to give out things

differently. It was a seachange from the top of the organisation. That

brought it into collaboration with interesting designers. The company

almost fell. The industry almost failed. It was a great example of

hubris. In the 1980s it was one of the most vibrant industries in the

UK. Then it almost died. What we have done as an industry, is

revitalising to such an extent that wallpaper is a trend right across

the globe. Have you prepared for the next time? Wallpaper will go out

again. We are constantly paranoid. You have two different things. The

important question here is where ideas come from. Andrew, apart from

Kelly Hoppen, where it design originate from? That is a difficult

question. You have to have an attitude. We encourage our people to

travel, we encourage them to collaborate and we do not want them

spending time in the design studio. We want them out there visiting

places. The skill though, is collecting all that and bring it

together `` bringing it all together in a concept. We do that every

season. We have a team of people that work on what are the trends

that the consumer want. It is not difficult to get the trend, what is

difficult is to get the trend at the right time or in the right place. It

is quite an interesting one. The thing you said is absolutely right.

It is the timing. There are trend leaders who the press will go to to

say, in your opinion, where do you think trends will go in the next

year? Is that you? I do that for most of the press. I have to get my

trend reports of January. We do that as well. Everybody does it. So you

are setting the trend is and we are not really a part of it? We're not

sitting them, we are reserving them Adam Hansen. There is a chicken and

egg here. Is it consumer tastes that is determining the trend? Is a lot

of nonsense that? I'm actually very against trends and I always say

that. I'm against that because in a way, it's not real. This is where I

was going. I'm saying I'm against trends and everyone knows that but I

will write them. For example, in the recession, I looked at what we were

doing, what were people doing more? They were spending more time at

home. What can you do in the home that isn't going to cost an awful

lot? How can we nurture that feeling? The economy and what's

going on in the world plays a part in my trend reports rather than

saying it's fluffy, it's pink, it's white. The warmth and comfort and

security in the home that you are talking about, you can see that

reflect did in stores and workplaces, where people create

environments where people can feel comes the ball. `` comfortable. It's

all part of that same trend. We have talked a lot about consumer tastes

and design and the process of generating it. But let's not forget,

we are talking about a business as well. The role of a brand name in

this area must be very important. I am looking at you to some extent,

Kelly Hoppen. You are a brand in your own right. There's a company,

an organisation, with your name on it. How much of it is you or your

name being used? I'm picturing you being in a studio with a lot of

other people but not Kelly Hoppen actually doing most of the work? I'm

in my studio every day at nine o'clock. Up until one year ago, I

designed every project to leave my studio in 38 years. I love it. But

you have lots of other people. I have one of the designer who has

been training under me for four years. She does a lot of work but

nothing goes out without me checking it. What I have underneath me are 40

technical people and we do our visuals. For every job, they might

be 30. Computerised visuals. Up until one year ago, I would give the

position for every visual. I now have a team that can do that. But

the top level things that you do... And I meet every client and install

every job person in. But the brand is important, isn't it? Intellectual

property is also important. This is a business where... How easy is it

to protect your intellectual property? Lowers, you have designed

stores. You are all copying each other, presumably. Again, it's about

inspiration. For Fitch, it's very hard to copy it. You don't have the

same space. You can look at the certain finishes that we've used or

the design of the customer journey that we have created through the

store, but that's much harder to copy than a product that's more

specific. Andrew, do your wallpapers get copied? Yes. Not so much in

Western Europe or North America. 30 years ago, they did. There is

respect for differentiation of design but we do get copied in Asia,

unfortunately. You have to take a long`term view. I'm sure in ten

years, copying will be less prevalent in China. Culturally, it's

still there. But it does reinforce your brand potential because if they

are copying you, you still have desirability. Kelly, you have stores

in China. Yes. But we are copied all the time but I'm slightly to blame

because I have books where I tell people how to do it. Equally, when I

was doing a book signing in Beijing, I looked at the text and I thought

that it didn't seem right... And I looked at the book and it turned out

they all copies. So we wrote a note on Twitter and said if anyone ever

brings me a book that is not real, I won't sign it. But furniture,

everything is copied. If it happens in this country, however, you have

more of a chance of doing some. Companies like us, we pitch for

business. And we pitch against local design studios as well. That's an

issue. You might not win the pitch but then suddenly you will see a

store that looks remarkably like yours. We tried very hard not to

pitch creatively but on our track record. But sometimes, you do

get... Give away the product. Because there is still this demand

for designers, particularly from the UK, in emerging economies. This is a

good point. How far are these "Western" concepts and designs

export of all to emerging markets? `` able to be exported to emerging

markets? Is huge. Half of our work is in Asia. In Hong Kong, go into

any one of those stores, they only want British, Italian, French,

German, Belgian brand names. They won't buy anything that is Chinese.

It has to be made outside of Asia. Made, not just designed? Yes. We

were making some of our furniture out of China. We are now making it

out of Britain and selling twice as much, exporting it back to China.

And they are looking for that made in Britain quality. You manufacture

your wallpaper in Lancashire. You don't have to do it there but it's

particularly interesting when it's manufactured as well is designed...

It's very Artisan. Even though our product is well invested and

state`of`the`art, the mixture of colour and the interpretation of

designed to production is where the skill is. And we have people in this

business who have been doing it for all their lives. There is an Artisan

element to it. And that just cannot be copied. And it's just so nice...

It's back to Kelly Hoppen 's point that there is a cachet in it being

made in China. Where will design go over the next 20 or 30 years? When

things become more global or converged around the world? Or, as

everybody gets better after... If the European model becomes less

prevalent in some ways, if it becomes more localised or

diffused... I wonder which way it will go. I think that European

designs will always stand out and be different and it's why we have done

well as designers in America and China and in the Middle East. We

have something that's different and we have lots of heritage. And I

think that we will always hold onto that. I'm not certain. I think we

are there for a while yet but I'm completely inspired by some of the

designs I have seen coming out of the newer market, more so than in

the US and things like that. I'm just saying that in Europe, I think

that we will always have something that's different. When we see

emerging markets with new designers, you think... I think Asia in the

last two years has been at the forefront. And there will be another

market. Turkey was another. But that's what's great about design.

It's constantly evolving and getting better. Somebody younger and better

will always come out from the left wing somewhere, keeping you on your

toes. Cast your own businesses ahead 20 years. Where do you see them

going? Kelly, what about you? I don't know. I will be on a yacht

somewhere. I still like doing it and people still want their homes

designed and there is always a new product or something new... I like

challenges. 20 years? I don't know how old I will be then. I will still

be irritating you. I don't think we will be as western centric as we

are. In most of our studios, we have people from the West. We will have

that sort of change in the next five years, let alone 20. Andrew, your

business is interesting because you are third`generation. Still the two

families of the founders, Henry and Harold. Fourth`generation? I don't

know, to be honest. There are seven directors on our board and four of

them are not in the family. We would not have survived all grown if we

did not have those external forces. But I think we will be more

international. 30% of our sales are outside of the UK and in 20 years

time, I would estimate about 80%. Manufacturing in Blackburn?

Certainly we will be based in Blackburn, yes. Well, I am afraid we

have to do with the blinds on this conversation. My guests were Kelly

Hoppen of Kelly Hoppen Interiors, Andrew Brown of Graham and Brown and

Lois Jacobs from the design agency, Fitch. The downloads from this

programme are available. Details are on our website and you can always

listen to it on BBC Radio 4. We also like to get your e`mail messages.

Just send us a line. If you have just come in after a

night out, you don't need me to tell you that it's quite cold out there.

Some fog to watch out for as well. If you are about to head out, that's

something to bear in mind. These