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From the Trenches: Marketing a Design Firm Part 2: Making the Leap by Joseph Dennis Kelly II |
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Dropping the safety net of a full-time job and launching a solo career can be an alluring yet daunting decision for anyone. For Jeff Miller, who gave up his role as VP of Design at a prestigious Manhattan design firm to pursue this dream, it was almost inevitable. The desire for recognition of his own work, his own decisions and sensibilities was something ingrained in his spirit from the earliest days of his design education. After paying his dues, through years of consulting work and previous design endeavors, his career as an independent designer is beginning to take off. |
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The Call |
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The Quest |
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The Struggle |
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The Breakthrough |
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| The Return Eric Chan, Miller’s mentor and former employer, says that the most important thing any new venture can do is to differentiate itself in innovative ways that ensure the industry and the market understand what the firm stands for. “There is no one formula to running a design business, just as there is no one formula for design,” says Chan. “Every part of running a business requires different approaches each time because the reasons change. Find a new reason to guide the process, otherwise what was created and used before will be repeated continuously.” He goes on to note that design and business theory only work when used in practice, not when used to build brand. “What’s most important is output,” he says. “People today are overanalyzing and not doing enough. A fair amount of marketing and public relations is necessary to grow, but one can overkill by doing too much. Today, one doesn’t need to exert a lot of effort to build recognition. In Italy, the whole industry has very little to do with production, but a lot of story-building. Building a story is not wrong, but I don’t think one can depend on it to launch a career….Keep doing good work. Be focused. Get the work out. Then try to react to the market. There are many mediocre designers and we don’t need another one. Know that you are good. Know what you stand for as a designer.”  Johndonnell, known for favoring designers with an innovative perspective of—and distinctive approach to—design, agrees with Chan, writing that “young designers today have been swayed by the new sense of celebrity that has wrapped many ‘big’ designers. Young designers seem preoccupied with creating logos and marketing materials, and not enough with the prioritization of their product. I can’t tell you how often I get a great presentation of marketing materials for a crap product—a 3D rendering of something that is essentially slick shiny crap. Designers need to have a business strategy. Knocking on the door of manufacturers doesn’t count. That’s simply one element of a plan. Designers these days seem to carry themselves like a garage band, carrying demos, playing a gig here and there, then hoping to ‘be discovered.’ Rarely does it work this way. Designers need to know how to sell ideas, themselves and product. That’s the business. Know the potential of how you and your products can affect the world around you…a good piece of design and a good designer emote something to others.” He suggests that designers looking to get media attention pitch stories rather than products to editors. “Everyone like exclusives—pitch a different angle to each editor you approach.” |
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| The Call, Phase Two As Miller begins his second year in business, he has set his sights on building a “more powerful financial scheme and a stronger, larger and more diverse network of industry relationships.” A national design competition held during fall 2003 developed into a relationship with the new Manhattan design manufacturing and distribution firm, Conduit, the umbrella company for Six Socks and Six Chocolates. Two of Miller’s furniture objects—a plastic chair and a floor lamp with a foam shade—were selected from the competition to be part of Conduit’s inaugural fall 2004 collection, which includes pieces by Constantin Boym, Tobias Wong and Miller’s fellow Surface 2003 T.A.G. Team member, Josh Owen. When the Conduit collection premiers during ICFF 2004, Miller will have doubled his 2004 goal of getting one object into circulation.  His seemingly passive plan of putting his objects out for others to see and experience appears like a non-plan because it doesn’t involve the conventions common in American business. But Miller’s approach to building his firm not only involves a keen understanding of how to bring to market what a manufacturer wants to produce, but also what consumers actually need.Although part of him wishes that he had written a formal business plan for organizing his activities and outlining his strategies with “goals that translate into realistic outcomes to sustain and develop” his business, Miller feels this would have been a mistake. “I’m only learning now about what things are getting me traction, which makes the present very much in flux. The lesson that I taught myself has been that by putting something out there, you get tremendous feedback—it’s never going to be perfect, it’s never going to be ready, there’s never going to be the perfect client—but if you don’t make any goal, you will never achieve anything.” |
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Other articles in the series: Philadelphia-based journalist Joseph Dennis Kelly II specializes in covering architecture and design. A graduate of the University of the Arts and the Home & Design editor of Philadelphia Style magazine, his work has appeared in I.D. (International Design), Metropolis (forthcoming), Architectural Record, Architecture, World Architecture, Interior Design and Clear. He also provides strategic writing and editing services to clients working internationally in the architectural and design fields. He can be reached at jdkelly.kellycomm@verizon.net |
After graduation, however, looking for direction, experience and a regular paycheck, he turned to the world of design consulting, He was soon hired as the first full-time employee of a start-up design consultancy in an office so cramped he literally rubbed elbows with the firm’s principal, Eric Chan. Working closely with a talented designer like Chan has its benefits, and over the years Miller helped build ECCO into what is today a well-respected 15-member team of top-notch designers.
The Miller Greene experience took him to a new level as a designer. A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Miller was delighted to have broken free of his inhibitions, if only for a few months, and to have lived the dream of a solo design career, an aspiration he had since he first came upon the field of industrial design, when he found, in the library of his West Chester (NY) high school, a book on Raymond Loewy. After reflecting on the Miller Greene venture and reconnecting to the passion he felt when he first read about Loewy, he knew he was on his path, a fact that was affirmed when his Miller Greene modular seating unit won an I.D. Magazine 1997 design award.
During ICFF 2003, he showed his work in yet another storefront-style exhibition, this time in a group exhibition at the Chelsea Hotel organized by the Downtown group and entitled “Downtown at the Chelsea Hotel.” And while this show again generated much enthusiasm for his work, it was his selection to Surface Magazine’s 2003 T.A.G. Team and the inclusion of his work in Surface’s 2003 Salone del Mobile and ICFF installations—as well as Surface’s special ICFF 2003 off-site show at a Chelsea museum—that really catapulted Miller onto the industry’s radar screen as an important emerging solo designer. Riley Johndonnell, brand creative director for Surface Magazine, writes via email that he selected Miller for Surface’s 2003 T.A.G. Team because Miller “seems less concerned with embedding his ego into the design object,” adding that in Miller’s work “function, innovation and beauty come first…It’s very pure design where aesthetic is influenced by the function. His signature does come through in the design, but not in a forced way. His pieces seem to speak of a process: in each piece you can see solutions to problems, you can see the designer’s thought process.” These exhibitions of Miller’s objects caught the eye of Joey Tessalona, design director at Clinton’s Felissimo Design House. Tessalona, who calls Miller a "great upcoming designer," selected Miller’s aluminum bed for inclusion in Felissimo’s recent “Life Symphony” exhibition.