How Britain Jumpstarts Design

(page 3 of 3)

Innovation as Daily Business

That's something Edward Naylor, chief executive of Naylor Industries, a Yorkshire-based clay drainage-pipe maker, knows all too well. Since Naylor, a former accountant, took over his fourth-generation family firm in 1993, he has expanded the business into plastic pipes, concrete products for the construction industry, and high-end ceramic planting pots for consumers. After having had to invest heavily to automate and modernize the business, he had little money to spend on things like branding or new product development. "Coming from a financial background, all of our effort and resources went into buying things like machinery that would give us an instant impact on productivity," Naylor says.

But for Naylor to expand its business, it needed to change its strategy. "With sewer pipes, we had been serving businesses," he says. "Now suddenly we had to deal with packaging, branding, and promoting directly to consumers. We needed an entirely new skill set." So Naylor signed up for Designing Demand.

A team first visited the company three years ago, and suggested that Naylor begin working with students at Staffordshire University, a college with a strong ceramics program. The students, who were paid, worked closely with the manufacturing side of the business to come up with several new designs that led to five new products. Branding expert Fiona Myles, of Myles Consulting, was hired to revamp the company's image and develop a new brand language that was applied to everything from promotional materials to the Web site. And a formalized process was put in place to encourage internal product development, something that Naylor has since expanded to all three divisions of the company. The result, he says, "is phenomenal." After spending $400,000 on design, the company saw a tenfold increase in annual sales in 2006. "Our market share [for ceramic pots] went from less than 1% to 10% in three years and we took our first order from Japan a few months ago," says Naylor. "We took a leap of faith and it paid off."

The Design Council knows that if the program is to stay relevant to the needs of Britain's small businesses, it needs to move with the times. That's why it is increasing the program's scope to incorporate sustainability issues and service design. "Smaller companies tend to be focused on the day-to-day needs of running the business," says Ball. "It's up to the design associate, who is used to incorporating sustainability and the design of services into their work, to make the company aware of the kinds of issues which may impact their business in the future."

Click here to view the BusinessWeek slide show.

Capell is a senior writer in BusinessWeek's London bureau .