Neptune Outdoor Furniture
Neptune Outdoor Furniture is staking out new territory with a modern, distinctive range which it is confident will open up new private sector business to go with its established public sector clientele.
Background
Hampshire-based Neptune Outdoor Furniture, founded in 1966, produces outdoor furniture, mainly for public sector clients like councils, schools and health authorities. The business’s core staff handle assembly, delivery and installation along with manufacturing of wooden parts and concrete products such as planters and supports.
Problem
Neptune wanted to grow by attracting a more diverse customer base and focused initially on improving its brand, marketing and production processes with help from the Manufacturing Advisory Service. Although it had seen long-running success with products like its Southampton seat, being referred by MAS to Designing Demand helped the business realise their ambition to develop new products and reach new customers as well as stimulate fresh business from existing clients.
Sales and Technical Director Richard Jastrzebski says: ‘A lot of our products are quite traditional, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, things are changing and we need to move forward.’
But Neptune was unsure about how to get the right help, he adds: ‘We hadn’t worked satisfactorily with external designers for at least ten years and that was only product parts. It was more like 20 years since we had used outside design help successfully on a project from start to finish.’
Response
Design Associate James Duguid helped the business create a design brief and prepare a shortlist of designers. ‘He helped us work out what we needed, which markets we were aiming for and which designers we would need, and he helped us to manage the project,’ says Jastrzebski. Lyndhurst-based Rodd Industrial Design were chosen, he says, because ‘we felt we had an affinity with them, plus their location made it easy for us to visit each other regularly and keep up good communication.’
The result is the Cerro seat and bench, which combines a distinctive contemporary design with the traditional solidity valued by current clients. James Duguid says Neptune can break into new markets: ‘Their mainstay has tended to be public sector business but they now have the potential to move into private sector areas like leisure, conference centres and marinas without upsetting the existing customer base. Jastrzebski adds: ‘In a typical town, you tend to see our products in parks and surrounding areas – we now want to create more presence in town centres.’
The impact
Richard Jastrzebski is confident the Cerro range will give the business extra impetus in boosting sales following its launch in February 2009: ‘It means we have something new and exciting to offer and we hope this will result in orders for the Cerro and create new interest in our existing products. It’s our first step in a new direction.
‘In 2008 sales grew by over five per cent – I believe that would have been higher but for the negative publicity about the economy, but any growth in difficult times is pleasing and we hope our new products to have a similar impact,’ says Jastrzebski.
And he is clear about the value of Designing Demand in opening up a new direction for the company: ‘Before Designing Demand we wouldn’t have known which designers to approach or how to brief them. The programme has helped us with that as well as helping us focus on what we need. We have been shown things we wouldn’t have found out otherwise - it’s been an education for us.’
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