How it’s made: JDD

What are the key design stages you have in place for ensuring your designs have a strong commercial chance of success?

The benefit we have as a truly design-led business and manufacturing business, where the ideas are created by the owners and development can be done solely in our own facilities, using our in-house skill sets, is that our barrier for something to have commercial success, or at least commercial viability when factoring in development costs, is very low. This has enabled us to test products and concepts in a way many others in the market may not be able to. As well as enabling us to test out our more unique ideas without much pressure on their commercial success, it also enables us to react to market trends almost immediately.

The development of innovations in the form of new products is a demanding management task – how do you deal with the key challenges of creating new products?

Product development is a process so engrained into the make up of JDD – whether it be creating new products or our ability to create custom adjustments on a job-by-job basis, we have evolved around many of the typical challenges companies face in a unique way. There is no ‘shock to the system’ in the way there would be at a company fixed to automated standard products. The management associated with development has been streamlined, so it can be applied to every project we do.

What design management processes do you use and how have they changed the way you develop new products?

One of our USPs is that our design process is very flexible and responsive. The key to that working is having a streamlined route of managing our development. We like to cut out the bulls**t where we can, so we favour a no bureaucracy approach.

The Theory of Constraints in design is a methodology for identifying the most important limiting factor (speed to market, manufacturing capabilities, size of range, resource, cost, pricing etc).  What is your most limiting factor and how are you overcoming them?

It’s undeniable that, at its core, JDD is a design-led, upholstery-led manufacturer. It is a selection of materials that allows us to be flexible and responsive while also hitting the current market trend for a softer office.

However, there are limitations that come with that isolated manufacturing capability, but we have embraced them. It has allowed us to create ideas that become unique to us, where other materials and processes would have been arguably the easier option in a larger organisation.

Working towards solutions in a unique way has given us our unique identity that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Through adversity comes innovation.