One year on from forming KIN under the Innovative Routes to Market program, we caught up with Gareth Neal in his workshop home, to discuss the impact of UBS help on the group.

 

Yes, we still have meetings with UBS. We email ideas across to them; they have great ideas on tweaking our presentation and tailoring it to corporate targets. We can   project ourselves to business-minded people rather than design-minded people, cultivating that side of KIN. That’s why our business plan has changed; they are helping us with what big businesses need and their environmental strategies. Big businesses are set up with waste streams anyway, so we can aim at them.

 

 

It can vary between one and three per month, it depends how quickly we get on a roll. We have so many members that sometimes a fragment of KIN has the UBS meeting instead of all of us.

 

 

We are keen not to just push the fact that it is all eco-friendly. That is just because we think every company should be considering it now. We don’t want to be seen to be getting on an environmental bandwagon. It’s just a philosophy that should be engrained within every design company in the UK from now on. That is our philosophy but we are not trying to use it to market ourselves that way, it is just the basics of our business. Every designer should have that responsibility and have those constraints within their designs.

 

 

I already knew Junior and Anthony from a while back and I had briefly met Jason and Sarah before. Before Innovative Routes to Market, Anthony and I put together a business concept and a product; we also did an exhibition with Sarah and Jason. When Innovative Routes to Market came up, Jason and Sarah asked if we’d like to join them. With Junior being part of our workshop, he became involved.

What is so innovative about the Innovative Routes to Market project?

 

It puts together people who wouldn’t normally work together. Some of us would never collaborate with each other without it. I probably would not be focussing on the environmental angle as much I am now. All involvement with professionals in any field is certainly useful. Involvement with professionals in the money business who know what business ideas work and know how money-minded people think, or investment bankers think, is crucial.

 

I am part and parcel of a couple of galleries in town, and they invited me this time last year to exhibit with them. I didn’t do it last year but I did it the year before. I’ve got a side table and two solid wooden pieces, another side table and a bench. The Table with Plateau is a Queen Anne 1730s table stuck inside a contemporary table. You can see the ghostly image of the Queen Anne inside a modern exterior.

 

 

It is inspirational having someone who brings people together. There is a resource for you to tap into connected with most areas of design and craft. Friendly and approachable people run it. They have a good idea of what is going on, while other organisations are often run by people who aren’t that clued up to what is going on in the design world. You feel they are doing it for you instead of for themselves.