Make it, Sell it: Grow your design business

Selling your work at markets can be a great place to start your business, with comparatively low overheads and the chance to chat to your customers face-to-face can really help develop a popular product range.  But if you’ve been doing this successfully for a while and are wondering what’s next, this interactive workshop will explore how to add other selling opportunities into the mix.

A panel of designer-makers will discuss the journeys they have taken, from starting out selling at markets to developing their business; selling online and running their own shop, including how to manage the process of researching and trying new options, getting clear about who your new customers are and growing your making capacity to respond to an increase in demand. This will be followed by a short visual planning session with an experienced business coach to help you develop your own ideas.

Event details

Who should attend? Designers and crafts makers
Place: Business & IP Centre
Cost: Free
How to Book: book online

Event dates

Fri 18 January 2013, 10am – 12pm

 

Ethical Approaches to Running a Designer-Maker Business

At New Designers, 29 June 2012, 12.00pm – 1.00pm 

Find out more

Get top tips and advice on ethical approaches to setting up and running a business from Cockpit Arts designer-makers Ute Decker and Alice Holloway Smith.

Ute Decker is renowned for her jewellery in recycled silver. In 2011, she was one of the pioneering jewellers to create a collection in the world’s first Fairtrade and Fairmined gold. She is regularly invited to write and speak about ethical jewellery www.utedecker.com

Alice Holloway-Smith has developed and produced an ethical materials database for Central St Martin’s and incorporates ethical sourcing into her own work, using upcycling in the production of accessories www.hollowaysmithnoir.com

 

Making It Licensing

21 March 2012, 6.00pm – 7.35pm followed by networking until 8.30pm Click to book

G05 (lecture theatre), University of the Arts London 272 High Holborn London, WC1V 7EY

More and more designer-makers are looking to diversify their practice and are using their intellectual property to generate additional income streams and raise their profile. This becomes most apparent when designer-makers are outsourcing production or working with major companies such as high street retailers who are looking to offer their customers something that little bit different.

Licensing your designs can have major benefits but for many can be a daunting and confusing prospect. Cockpit Arts has teamed up with Own It and  Artquest to deliver ‘Making It: Licensing’ a specially tailored event for designer-makers who are looking to capitalise on their designs and products through licensing.

We have invited makers to share their experiences, tips and reasons for entering into licensing deals. Afterwards, the makers and a specialist lawyer will answer all your licensing and IP queries.

Topics covered:

• How licensing works (different models) and the benefits.
• Important clauses in licensing contracts
• Licensing and brand alignment. Deciding what is the right fit for your company.
• The various payment terms in royalty contracts.
• What can go wrong and how to avoid these scenarios.
• What IP rights can you license and how can you protect your rights.
• Tops tips for a successful licensing deal.

Speakers:

Rebecca Chitty of Product of Your Environment specialising in design-led gifts and interior products.

Helen Johannessen of Yoyo ceramics a trained ceramist with particular expertise in modeling and mould making. (work pictured above)

Margaret Briffa – A leading intellectual property lawyer and founding partner of Briffa.

Making It: Branding

Friday 1 July 2011, 12pm – 1pm at New Designers

Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, LondonN1

As a new creative business, standing out from the crowd and connecting with your customers is key.  One of the most effective mechanisms for this is to create and manage a strong brand.  But if you thought branding was just for big corporates, think again!  A well defined brand will communicate the benefits of your products and services and the personality of your company by telling your own unique story and in doing so; help create customer loyalty and sales.

This one hour seminar is chaired by Ellen O’Hara, Head of Business Development from award winning social enterprise, Cockpit Arts. She will be bringing together well-known designer-maker brands Angie Boothroyd (work pictured), bespoke shoe designers carréducker and branding agency Felt will share their experiences of establishing successful brands read more. 

They will cover a range of areas including understanding your audience, defining your brand values, briefing designers, and using your own creativity to develop a company identity.  You’ll come away with the tools you need to develop and communicate your own unique brand whatever your budget!

 Making It: Heritage

 Commissions and collaborations in response to heritage venues and their collections

3 Feb 2011, 6pm – 8pm with drinks and networking until 8.30pm, FREE  

Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, Old Castle Street, E1 7NT

Over the last few years there’s been a significant increase in the number of creative businesses working in partnership with the heritage sector. There is a wealth of projects taking place across the country from large-scale installations, to special ranges of retail products.

For the heritage sector, working with designer-makers enables fresh interpretation, bringing the history of sites and their collections alive to visitors. For the maker this is a fantastic opportunity to develop their practice and create work directly inspired by museums.

So how do you get involved in these types of projects? Cockpit Arts teamed up with museumaker for a one-off seminar hosted by The Women’s Library. Attendees heard from makers about their experiences of working with museums – both in terms of developing installations and creating retail products for museum shops. Representatives from museums also shared their insights on working with makers.

The event was chaired by Brigid Howarth Co-Project Director for musuemaker. Speakers included: ceramicist Nicola Malkin (work pictured) who spoke about her commission at the Women’s Library, product designer Rebecca Chitty who discussed developing retail products for heriatge sites, textile designer Eleanor Pritchard and Acting Head of Exhibitions at Orleans House and Gallery, Miranda Stearn who spoke about their experiences of working together on a major commission.

How to Get into Craft

Futurising on the 29-30 June 2010 is the UK’s first creative industries opportunities festival, a networking hotbed putting the best new talent in direct contact with the movers and shakers of the creative world.  

We’re delighted to be the Craft Partner for the event and will be offering portfolio reviews, an information stand and the seminar: How to Get Into Craft where leading designers and makers will discuss the different journeys they have taken since graduation.

 

Inspiration to Realisation

Southbank Centre  23 March, 2010

Hear how six Cockpit designer-makers designed and made products for the Southbank Centre retail outlets at our seminar on 23 March. Gain insight into the research, development and design processes involved in the project which features products inspired by Southbank Centre’s unique surroundings. Book your free place now.

Designer-makers taking part in the project and speaking are: Sena Gu, Tania Clarke Hall, SORT, Sue King, Timea Sido and Naomi Ryder.

 

Designing the Recession

22 September 2009

In this lively panel debate experts discussed strategies for adapting to the changing economic climate and using the recession as a catalyst for growth. Panellists included jeweller Rachel Galley, textile artist Ptolemy Mann (work pictured) and trend-forecaster Chris Sanderson of The Future Laboratory. The event was Hosted by Cockpit Arts and CreateKX for the London Design Festival, at The British Library.

Listen to our podcast of the event (coming soon).

Global Shop Front

25 June 2009

Cockpit Arts joined forces with CreateKX to provide a dynamic evening of presentations focusing on the ins and outs of selling through an on-line market place. At the special evening event at the British Library, award winning online marketplace notonthehighstreet.com and successful designer-makers advised on how to use the web to sell, sell, sell.

 

 

Creative Collaborations

19 March, 2009

Held at the London College of Fashion, in partnership with own-it. The seminar explored how ambitious collaborations between craft and technology can open up new and exciting opportunities for both personal and product development. Participants benefited from insights from experienced designer-makers and advice from a legal expert on how to manage the process successfully. 

A report on the event: 

Fusing Craft and Technology

By: Lucy Gundry

A collaboration in March between Cockpit Arts and Own-It generated a seminar to explore work by established and emerging designer-makers who fuse craft with technology and their intellectual property rights.

‘Creative Collaborations – Craft and Technology’ was chaired by University of the Arts London Textile Futures Research and Consultancy Director Dr Jane Harris who spoke of her ‘crafting’ digital textiles for the virtual environment. For the past seven years, she has worked on a motion capture process with post-production technology to create garments that move on a virtually simulated body. She has seen a giant leap in the relationship between technology and craft disciplines, as technology is developing to render details such as hair and skin more realistically for virtual realities such as Second Life.

Head of Design at Holition Lynne Murray presented her virtual jewellery enterprise; a simulated shopping trip site allowing customers to try on virtual jewellery in real time. Holition is a result of a two year ‘Knowledge Transfer Partnership’ between Holts Lapidary (jewellery retail, design and manufacture) and Birmingham University, and a joint venture between Holts Lapidary and leading 3D technology specialists Inition. Murray’s intellectual property rights were developed around new patent-pending software and extraction of Holition as a third company from the former two.

UAL PhD textile student Kate Goldsworthy spoke about her development of a ‘technology toolbox’ to create fully recyclable textiles. The university’s rights to her material protect her collaborative work with outside organisations, but she can obtain individual rights for her ‘one off pieces’. Her presentation raised the questions of when you should start to think about your rights and what they are.

Olivier Geoffroy who established ‘Unto This Last’ in 2002 – named after Ruskin’s 1860 book that advocated for return of local craftsmen to their workshops in defiance of the Industrial Revolution and a fear that technology would destroy craftsmanship – presented his bespoke service, selling locally-crafted products at mass-production prices with up to 2,000 design options. He uses digital tools to record the know-how of craftsmanship techniques, adapted to work in a small workshop environment. He doesn’t own a patent and questioned whether this would provide more or less protection for his property.

Today, we celebrate a twenty-first-century marriage between technology and craftsmanship and evolution of successful techno-craft partnerships. Demand for ever-expanding intellectual property rights from student to established designer-maker cross-discipline, cross-technology and cross-audiences follow these fusions. ‘Crafting’ for the twenty-first century means makers embracing techno-tools and digital processes to create virtual products for a visionary future.

Image: work by Kate Goldsworthy

First published: a-n Magazine May 2009