The design process at Alessi can begin in several ways, explains the company's owner, Alberto Alessi. As Alessi’s products are so closely identified with their signature designer, finding - and maintaining relationships with - a wide range of product designers and architects is a key task for the company.
Alberto Alessi says Alessi needs to continuously develop the network of designers with whom they work if they are to continue to offer a differentiated and varied range of products.
He enumerates seven ways in which contact with new designers might be initiated before the design process commences:
1. Designers speculatively contact Alessi with an idea or concept: Around 350 designers a year contact Alessi in this way. Alessi’s exacting standards, however, and its demands for highly individual aesthetics and strong personalities mean that ideas initiated in this way are rarely followed through to production
2. Design workshops: Alessi organises 4 to 6 workshops each year, mainly with young designers through universities and industrial design schools across the world, although again this seldom results in a concept that will be followed through to production
3. Recommendations from journalists on the ground: A coterie of industry journalists who Alberto Alessi calls his ‘antennae’ journalists regularly suggest potential new designers with whom the company will then initiate contact
4. Suggestions from current collaborators: Designers already working with Alessi will often recommend other people in the field that have potential. This is a key information channel that has led to many successful collaborations
5. ‘Design explorations’: The company identifies an emblematic domestic object (most recently tea and coffee sets) and gives a group of architects free rein to design products around that theme unconstrained by the demands of series production (the products are handmade in silver by craftsmen). From a group of over twenty products, maybe five might be explored further with a view to creating mass production versions.This is a long-term and expensive method but the one favoured by Alberto Alessi: it’s worth noting that while return on investment is not guaranteed in terms of production-ready product development, Alessi leverages valuable publicity from the process and product concepts developed
6. Competitions run by Alessi: This is a less frequently used method of searching which, although deemed interesting, does not always see entries translated into real products
7. Contact from well-established designers: This type of direct contact with Alessi occurs frequently and will often result in a collaborative project.
However the initial contact has been made, when designers submit proposals for the company to evaluate, its internal teams select some of those to take forward towards production.
Alternatively, where designers have experience working with Alessi and a track record of success, the firm may suggest product ideas to them. Alessi emphasises, however, that this process is nothing like the traditional briefing process that might typically be seen when a firm engages an outside designer. It is not ‘a restricted briefing,’ he explains, rather, ‘just an idea, and they could react by giving us some projects.’
Indeed when Philippe Starck created the Juicy Salif, one of the company’s most iconic products, for Alessi in 1989, his original brief was to design a tray. His response was an idea for an octopus-like lemon squeezer sketched on a napkin still grease-spattered from a calamari lunch.
Juicy Salif, designed by Philippe Starck for Alessi
The design cycle takes between 18 months and two years, depending primarily on the main material from which the item in question is made. Stainless steel has the longest lead-time, explains Alessi, with porcelain and glass a little faster. Tooling and manufacturing engineering processes take up the majority of this time.
Once a concept is received, the technical evaluation and construction of an initial prototype is usually done in around three months. Analysis of the item’s market potential may take another month. If a go-ahead decision is made, production engineering will be completed in around a year, with the manufacture of moulds and tools taking up the remaining six to eight months.
Market
Today, Alessi continues to produce a wide range of kitchen and tableware. Its current catalogue contains around 2,000 different items, some of which are still manufactured at the company’s Italian factory. The company divides its product offering into three separate ranges:
- The 'Officina Alessi’ collection which includes ‘sophisticated, experimental and innovative products’ and small-scale and limited production items
- The 'ALESSI' collection which includes mass produced items using premium materials, high quality manufacturing and sophisticated design
- The ‘A di Alessi collection’, a range of products produced at high volumes and slightly lower prices.
Alessi has also extended its activities, using its design management expertise, to deliver a range of joint venture and licensing activities with outside manufacturers. These activities have included wristwatches, textiles and automotive designs.