The design process has been extremely influential in terms of the success that we’ve had. It was not just about the products that were re-designed but it was also how we presented it to our customers and really that was very important. We are a small company dealing with huge retailers who, let’s face it, are being bombarded with companies wanting to trade with them everyday. For us it is very difficult to even get an audience with the buyer. We are very lucky if we get to see them even once a year, so when do get to see them it is very important that we make a significant impact immediately and Elmwood helped us with that, in terms of helping shape the presentation. And again, as a story, we got to see, eventually after a lot of battering and persuasion, we eventually managed to get an audience with one of the major retailers and when we got to see them they clearly, at the last minute, didn’t really want to talk to us.
They said we had 20 minutes, they were very aggressive, they couldn’t see why we were wasting their time. We delivered the presentation from beginning to end, you know, quickly but in a professional manner.
We ended up not spending 20 minutes but nearly an hour. We turned the buyer completely around from being completely anti-us, being aggressive, to at the end of that meeting to agreeing to list two of our products and that is a direct result of having a complete package of which design is a major part of.