Industrial design and factory through our trend design forecasting method
Our main office is in Hong Kong. Our assembly line is in Guzhen . We design and produce in China, India , Vietnam .
Our work is essentially based on forecasting future market trends. We must analyse and know what will be best seller , lighting, furniture, home decoration, in the future. Our work is mainly about orienting with industrial design the capital investments of our client. We must with certainty indicate and manage the capital investment in design, tooling and in the production of consumer goods. The goods produced will be dedicated to the large mass market for which they must be salable and profitable.
Our typical client comes up with an investment budget and a target for gross revenue, including taxes, transportation, retail. All the intermediate work of industrial design ,production and delivery to client warehouse is our job, it is our mission.
Analyses
Currently, the work of Milano Design Terminal has profoundly changed and is innovative. Our customers are large commercial chains selling furniture and home decoration. These international brands have large online stores. In every large city they have shops, the real and potential clientele is not infinite. To generate profits it is necessary for each customer to return to the same store many many times, because the alternative of continuing to open new stores to pursue new customers would be impossible.
Objectives
To attract customers, our client need to renew their assortment at least two or four times they have it, but they do not have industrial design and industrial production inside Our client has as its goal the turnover, and this only passes through the continuous return to the client's shops
Policies
The policies to achieve the objectives are to create a series of seasonal collections in the furniture and home decoration sector. The policy is to give the customer the feeling, every time, of being in a different / new shop. The collections are profoundly different, linked to the calendar, but above all linked to design.
The most important thing is that style, fashion and design are in” tune” with world fashions, in tune with others and magazines. Products must conform to the flow of information in the media and not far from the competition.
For example, if the color pink, ecology, digital pastel colors, an ethnic style, natural materials are promoted, it is not possible for our customers to remain without these items. In this scenario, the greatest difficulty is to know before the design and predict trends, because we must know them at the time of capital investment in production, not when the competition from our customers is already in distribution. The timing of industrial production in Asia requires you to know the trends at least one year before the products are put on the market.
Method and Means
The safest method to have forecasts of at least 12 months is to make a synthesis of the most important trend forecasts and an intelligence work between factories and some artists and designers considered "trend sectors", with whom we collaborate. In this scenario we work on two levels
The first, Milano Design Terminal receives from customers the photos of the trends selected for future collections. These images are often abstract, referring to lifestyles, settings, materials. This work is done by the client's art director. The images we receive do not necessarily include photos of products to be made.
In the second scenario we have “ white paper” from the client, and then we proceed with our trend forecasts. Our preferred supplier is WGSN.
In all scenarios, the next phase is the industrial design. From these abstract images we can design and subsequently create an entire collection of products, from seating to lighting, up to delivery to the customer's warehouse or shop. We are able to prepare a series of renderings, and let the customer choose the various investment options. For large-scale distribution we design and produce quarterly collections.
For some customers we can produce four or more collections per year, for example
SPRING and EASTER
SUMMER and SEASONAL PROMOTION
AUTUMN and WINTER
CHRISTMAS and FINAL SALE
Our main product are lighting. About lamps we are able to follow all the international certification processes, for example from LVD / CE up to UL.
In detail, we want to chronologically illustrate how our work is carried out
- we receive the images selected by the client's art director
- alternatively, we develop an intelligence work starting from WGSN, to create the specific trend forecast for each customer
- Design of the collection of lamps and home decoration or, to reduce investments, we find products that can be adapted to the needs of the style
- Creation of a series of renderings of the collection
- Sending the drawings to the customer, in ppt pdf format, who selects them and indicates changes
- construction of prototypes,
- Sending prototypes and quotations to Italy
- Reception and organization of orders
- Product engineering according to CE regulations and required tests
- First pieces and materials sent to the various testing laboratories, fabrics, LVD and RoHS
- Internal drafting of all technical files and declarations of conformity
- Packaging study, instructions and graphics,
- Update quotations, start of production
- At the end of the production, we send the objects to Italy by container and invoice
- We send a selection of sample pieces for photos and presentations to the customer's marketing, via express courier
Specifically, from a "trend photo board" we are able to bring the product on the shelf and in the photographic studios for customer communication
We have been doing this work for many years, in China, we are sure to be able to enhance and increase your lighting, furniture, home decoration collection. Milano Design Terminal is able to develop a new collection with a global production, on a quarterly basis. With a supply chain of international suppliers, and above all with our Italian design.