My blog entry at Garden Design today: decoding quality
Outdoor furniture: help required !!!
June 22, 2010
We love design but we need help!
I have tracked outdoor designs for 3 years now. I would love to say the opposite but I recently realized how little I know about how they react in real life! New designs are just so different now. They simply have not been around long enough to provide us with first hand experience about the way they play out over time.
I am sure many readers will agree: shops, brands and marketers please be more articulate and precise about what you have to offer !
'Suitable for outdoors' is an encouraging description but...
What exactly does 'suitable for outdoors' mean? For some it means the design can stay out all year round in Alaska. For others, it means they are promising that if you forget the chair outdoors and there is a little shower it is not a huge problem. For too many it is a catch-all phrase enabling them to grab a share of the huge new outdoor market without making much of an effort to develop quality products.
Surely there is a better way to go about helping us decode and spot quality.
We are outdoor lovers not chemical engineers!
Marketers are not helping because we are not all chemical engineers and they seem to forget that. We do not know the properties and performances of materials found in new designs: polypropylene, polycarbonate or epoxy ! Most of us certainly do not know that low density polypropylene is far more resistant to extreme weather conditions than its regular form. We do not know if polyethylene is stronger and more shock resistant than polycarbonate.
Though for indoor decor this knowledge is not that important, for outdoors it is.
I will applaud Vondom, the outdoor brand who took the Milan Furniture Fair by storm with a wide range of ground breaking designs. Their marketing team has caught on to consumer's need to know. One can read in their catalogs etc.. more specifically what is on offer. For instance, their new VLEK planters (see image) has an auto watering system that works for up to 120 days or their pots are clearly marketed as able to resist temperatures from x to y celsius depending on the model. No loose ends there. You know where you stand.
We should congratulate Extremis for explaining on their web site that a great parasol design must not only look good or be easy to open and close but must also be resistant to winds. They go further and provide the indicator designed to evaluate a design in this respect. It is the Beaufort test.
Finally, thank you Gloster for having a great 'demo device' in stores helping us really understand what new 'water through' fabrics are all about, how they work, and how long it takes to have a dry pillow after a shower.
I would love my list to go on but sadly not that many brands have actually fully taken on board our need to know how things will work out with rain, sun, mud, kids, and ...birds !
In the coming weeks I will post about a few of the newest materials and try to provide pointers.
In the meantime, happy shopping and questioning !
Anne
We love design but we need help!
I have tracked outdoor designs for 3 years now. I would love to say the opposite but I recently realized how little I know about how they react in real life! New designs are just so different now. They simply have not been around long enough to provide us with first hand experience about the way they play out over time.
I am sure many readers will agree: shops, brands and marketers please be more articulate and precise about what you have to offer !
'Suitable for outdoors' is an encouraging description but...
What exactly does 'suitable for outdoors' mean? For some it means the design can stay out all year round in Alaska. For others, it means they are promising that if you forget the chair outdoors and there is a little shower it is not a huge problem. For too many it is a catch-all phrase enabling them to grab a share of the huge new outdoor market without making much of an effort to develop quality products.
Surely there is a better way to go about helping us decode and spot quality.
We are outdoor lovers not chemical engineers!
Marketers are not helping because we are not all chemical engineers and they seem to forget that. We do not know the properties and performances of materials found in new designs: polypropylene, polycarbonate or epoxy ! Most of us certainly do not know that low density polypropylene is far more resistant to extreme weather conditions than its regular form. We do not know if polyethylene is stronger and more shock resistant than polycarbonate.
Though for indoor decor this knowledge is not that important, for outdoors it is.
I will applaud Vondom, the outdoor brand who took the Milan Furniture Fair by storm with a wide range of ground breaking designs. Their marketing team has caught on to consumer's need to know. One can read in their catalogs etc.. more specifically what is on offer. For instance, their new VLEK planters (see image) has an auto watering system that works for up to 120 days or their pots are clearly marketed as able to resist temperatures from x to y celsius depending on the model. No loose ends there. You know where you stand.
We should congratulate Extremis for explaining on their web site that a great parasol design must not only look good or be easy to open and close but must also be resistant to winds. They go further and provide the indicator designed to evaluate a design in this respect. It is the Beaufort test.
Finally, thank you Gloster for having a great 'demo device' in stores helping us really understand what new 'water through' fabrics are all about, how they work, and how long it takes to have a dry pillow after a shower.
I would love my list to go on but sadly not that many brands have actually fully taken on board our need to know how things will work out with rain, sun, mud, kids, and ...birds !
In the coming weeks I will post about a few of the newest materials and try to provide pointers.
In the meantime, happy shopping and questioning !
Anne
Excellent post, Anne! Too often manufacturers fall in love with a material or process that is not easy to understand. The information (benefits!) need to stream through the sales force and the retailer to the customer for it to matter. That's where really smart marketing comes in. Manufacturers, like those you mentioned, need to make it crystal clear to the end user why their product is superior. Sure, it costs money to develop an in-store demo or a online video, but if the product has real value its more than worth it.
Posted by: Judy Paolini | Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:46 PM