What the heck is this thing? Read on
Here's an example of how a nuts-and-bolts industrial design firm—one that you've probably never heard of—can integrate with other businesses to achieve fantastic, if quiet, financial success designing products that most consumers have never heard of or seen.
The design firm in question is the 62-person Design Concepts, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Design Concepts was contracted by Diversey, a company in the decidedly unsexy business of keeping factories clean. Diversey noticed that the tracks of their clients' air conveyors—overhead systems used for moving bottles across the factory floor—were absurdly difficult to clean out. The process requires workers get up on ladders and scrub down every inch of the conveyor's internal track using rags and a spray bottle.
Diversey turned to Design Concepts, who then developed the ZipClean robot you see above. It increases the cleaning speed by a factor of 200, meaning less downtime for the production line, and obviates the need for workers to get up on ladders (a process that traditionally comes with a percentage of accidents and injuries). Check out how it works:
Sure, the ZipClean is no iPhone or Aeron chair, but by cranking out products like these--as well as across the growing healthcare & medical industries, and consumer products--Design Concepts has seen remarkable growth: Since 2005 they've doubled their revenues, and even through the recent years of the recession, increased their staff by 36 percent. They operate out of a 22,000-square-foot facility, own hundreds of patents, and have an international client list. An article on Design Concepts in a local-area newspaper points out that they've sent researchers to 25 countries in the past two years.
As the same article points out,
"We just ended up with some very good clients that had some really nice needs that allowed us to grow and expand," [company President Dave] Franchino said. "We're very grateful for that because we were certainly aware of how tough the rest of the economy was and yet (for us) it was flat out for the last three years."
About 30 percent of Design Concepts' clients are private equity firms and venture capitalists trying to bring new products to market. The rest are established companies that may not have the skill sets, are too busy to design a prototype and/or are looking for an outside perspective.
So, just a reminder for those of you ID grads pounding the pavement looking for work. For every name-brand big-city design firm out there, there are hundreds of more obscure firms doing behind-the-scenes ID work, and making a good living at it.
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Comments
Thank you :)
I've had talks with other students before we graduated, and it seemed like unless you were working for an internationally known company, you were nothing. There's something to be said for having a job at, say, Nike or Apple, but it's no mark of shame to work at someone more obscure if the work you do is good.
The handheld size is a major plus!