Design expo draws world talent

HONG KONG – Some of the world’s top product designers and architects will be in Hong Kong next week for a conference that aims to set the scene for the next step in China’s economic revolution.

The Business of Design Week intends to bring the world’s best designers to the heart of the world’s highest concentration of factories, in a bid to help manufacturers transform their products into high-value branded merchandise. “Our product designs are not innovative enough to become world-beating brands,” said Freeman Lau, board chairman of expo organisers the Design Centre.”Manufacturers need to lift themselves beyond the level where they are in competition with other cheap markets.Design is the key to that future.”The expo will feature keynote talks from the likes of shoe designer Jimmy Choo, fashion designer Zandra Rhodes and John Sorrell, London’s architecture chief.Now in its fifth year, past expos have featured speakers such as fashion designer Vivienne Tam, the designer, restaurateur and retailer Sir Terence Conran, and architects Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry and Philippe Starck.Organisers are hoping that local players will be inspired by such big international names.”The intention is to get them to talk about how to make a design successful,” said Lau, himself an award-winning product designer, “for them to share with us not their design skills but their business models.”Hong Kong has since the 1980s been the gateway to investment in southern China, which has emerged as the “world’s factory,” providing cheap labour and land for a global manufacturing sector that has migrated from its traditional centres.At the moment, China is world-beating, with something like a third of all low-value manufactured products and parts supplies coming from Chinese factories.However, improving living conditions have lifted labour costs and competition from other developing economies such as India and Vietnam pose threats to China’s long term prominence at the low end.Economists believe China must now move further up the value ladder if it is to retain manufacturing market share, and that means creating more sophisticated products.That also means creating new world-beating designs.Development of national brands is a priority of the government.In a recent editorial in the China Economic Daily, vice-minister of commerce Gao Hucheng said China’s elevation up the value chain was vital.”The better the brands of a country are, the more leading role it will play on the value chain and the more advantageous position it will occupy in the allocation of fortunes,” Gao wrote.”Whereas if a certain country can only lie at the low end of international division of labor, it will lose a lot of interests in international exchange.”Lau believes Hong Kong companies, which own the lion’s share of the factories in southern China, have already begun heeding the upgrade call.”Local manufacturers have already begun building up their brands,” he said.”There are a few names that are beginning to make themselves known,” Chief among them, he said, is Haier, the home appliance maker.Hong Kong, too, had one or two brands that were providing a global stage for local design.”Goods of Desire – GOD – is one brand I have been impressed with,” said Lau, whose own successes have included a bottled water packaging that helped boost the producer’s sales and an award-winning chair.”It doesn’t look overtly Hong Kong or Chinese, but when you see its products, you know they are from Hong Kong,” he said of GOD.”Muji from Tokyo is the same.It doesn’t have ‘Japanese’ stamped all over it, but there is a simplicity and purity in design that is typical of Japanese design.”Nampa-AFP”Our product designs are not innovative enough to become world-beating brands,” said Freeman Lau, board chairman of expo organisers the Design Centre.”Manufacturers need to lift themselves beyond the level where they are in competition with other cheap markets.Design is the key to that future.”The expo will feature keynote talks from the likes of shoe designer Jimmy Choo, fashion designer Zandra Rhodes and John Sorrell, London’s architecture chief.Now in its fifth year, past expos have featured speakers such as fashion designer Vivienne Tam, the designer, restaurateur and retailer Sir Terence Conran, and architects Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry and Philippe Starck.Organisers are hoping that local players will be inspired by such big international names.”The intention is to get them to talk about how to make a design successful,” said Lau, himself an award-winning product designer, “for them to share with us not their design skills but their business models.”Hong Kong has since the 1980s been the gateway to investment in southern China, which has emerged as the “world’s factory,” providing cheap labour and land for a global manufacturing sector that has migrated from its traditional centres.At the moment, China is world-beating, with something like a third of all low-value manufactured products and parts supplies coming from Chinese factories.However, improving living conditions have lifted labour costs and competition from other developing economies such as India and Vietnam pose threats to China’s long term prominence at the low end.Economists believe China must now move further up the value ladder if it is to retain manufacturing market share, and that means creating more sophisticated products.That also means creating new world-beating designs.Development of national brands is a priority of the government.In a recent editorial in the China Economic Daily, vice-minister of commerce Gao Hucheng said China’s elevation up the value chain was vital.”The better the brands of a country are, the more leading role it will play on the value chain and the more advantageous position it will occupy in the allocation of fortunes,” Gao wrote.”Whereas if a certain country can only lie at the low end of international division of labor, it will lose a lot of interests in international exchange.”Lau believes Hong Kong companies, which own the lion’s share of the factories in southern China, have already begun heeding the upgrade call.”Local manufacturers have already begun building up their brands,” he said.”There are a few names that are beginning to make themselves known,” Chief among them, he said, is Haier, the home appliance maker.Hong Kong, too, had one or two brands that were providing a global stage for local design.”Goods of Desire – GOD – is one brand I have been impressed with,” said Lau, whose own successes have included a bottled water packaging that helped boost the producer’s sales and an award-winning chair.”It doesn’t look overtly Hong Kong or Chinese, but when you see its products, you know they are from Hong Kong,” he said of GOD.”Muji from Tokyo is the same.It doesn’t have ‘Japanese’ stamped all over it, but there is a simplicity and purity in design that is typical of Japanese design.”Nampa-AFP