When we started our Bosch project about a few years ago one of the biggest surprises was understanding how fast Local Chinese brands where innovating, populating local for local products with AI technology and using the latest advances in fresh and some times innocent way.
Now it’s clear these market articulations are a natural incremental exploration. Companies act as a pragmatic lab where trial and error are learning the ropes of quality at an incredible speed.
Chinese manufacturers, always business-oriented, have managed to commoditize styling, once a key weapon of western companies; they are mastering not only how to apply good styles but also how to transform the past “product featurization” into more meaningful products skills, with coherence of language and use.
This combination of a natural passion for discovering how to do business with application of new and fresh technology is only a fscinating work in progress.
Millenials are boosting markets with a desire for more complex aesthetics combining local languages with future technologies and global quality standards and the sales chains are boiling, new ways to reach markets, new proposals of market combinations, new experiences, and lifestyle shops, ways of payments and algorithms that will match your soul.
The economical evolution, in one hand is rising prices and slowing down international commerce but on the other hand, it is transforming a full set of industries from manufactures to brands.
We perceive this on our clients, the vision is moving towards learning how to create value: what is the relevant part of empathy? what from my skills can create value? and how the consumer will understand my ideas.
It is the same curiosity that took china out of poverty to be the giant manufacture of this world that now is exploring how to be part of the system of value creation.
At the present Chinese products are awarded by many international organizations, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, the real CHINA design potential is up to come and the combination is fascinating: market demand for quality, technology availability, business ambition, money flow, and a learning mindset, you tell me where this can go once this group of innovators starts discovering their own secrets of brand experiences, acting with full empathy across the full value chain.
I strongly believe, a revisited version of “good design” will be coming very soon from CHINA.
