Sheffield steel, the north of England’s most famous export, is back.
Like many British companies, knife-maker Harrison Fisher saw design as a distress purchase. But four years ago, the Sheffield business, founded in 1838, was in distress, losing business to cheap foreign competition. So the company joined the Design Council’s Designing Demand programme, inviting a team of designers, led by Jonathan Ball, to examine every facet of the business. To them, the crux of the problem was clear: Harrison Fisher lacked a distinctive design agenda and was letting buyers from supermarkets and department stores plot its course.
Managing director Alastair Fisher knew that change was inevitable if his company was to survive: “It’s easy to become insular. When you’ve been at it so long you think you know all the answers.”
At the heart of the rethink was Harrison Fisher’s Taylor’s Eye Witness consumer brand, which faced stiff competition from cheap supermarket own-brand products. The design team changed the packaging and developed the product range, marrying contemporary style with Harrison Fisher’s core values of tradition and quality.
Local consultancy Ledgard Jepson designed a new logo and a new packaging range was unveiled at Spring Fair 2004, the UK’s leading gift and home trade event. Designers with retail experience refined the packaging so that designs targeted lifestyle instead of price range, as in the past. The range of packaging sizes shrank from 30 to six, cutting costs and improving efficiency.
Redesigning the product range was the final piece of the jigsaw. The company brought in up-and-coming designer Sam Hecht, who works for Muji among others. Ball says: “We wanted a signature designer – someone like Phillipe Starck – but didn’t want the signature to overwhelm the brand. We wanted a thoughtful and capable designer whose work would reflect the company’s values.”
It’s easy to become insular. When you’ve been at it so long you think you know all the answers Alastair Fisher, Harrison Fisher
Hecht’s first commission was a redesign of Harrison Fisher’s Chantry knife sharpener. His smart, understated piece won a design award at the 2004 Ambiente trade fair. A new range of high-quality kitchen knives followed, tailored by Hecht to the company’s production strengths and informed by Fisher’s industry knowledge. The launch piqued the interest of House of Fraser and prompted American kitchen retail chain Crate & Barrel to court the Sheffield company.
Alastair Fisher is in no doubt that the company’s £80,000 investment in design since 2002 was money well spent: “We had been under a lot of pressure and were losing business. The Design Council programme helped us get ahead of the competition instead of playing catch-up.” By exploiting government tax incentives on R&D spending, the company even managed to recoup half its development costs.
Fisher admits “If we’d done nothing our business wouldn’t be here today.”In 2002 he was worrying about how his company could avoid being undercut by low-cost competition from eastern Europe and Asia. Today, after spending £80,000 on design, he runs a confident company that can compete, on quality and design, with German rivals.
Article first published in Design Council Magazine, Issue 1, Winter 2006