Alessi has built a successful business by selling the idea of design, and of designers, to consumers. The company relies entirely on outside designers for all design execution and for the majority of concept initiation activities.
Because of this, the company has developed sophisticated in-house techniques for evaluating the potential of particular concepts and for preserving the designer’s original intent from drawing to mass production. Key elements of this capability include:
- A formula for the assessment of the potential of new designs in four key dimensions, supported by sophisticated market size and manufacturing cost analyses
- Skilled technicians who act as intermediaries between designers and manufacturing engineers
- A network of suppliers with high quality, low volume mass production capabilities
- A willingness to maintain a large product portfolio and to market test designs for extended periods.
Alessi operates in a market where novelty is very important to sales, where production volumes are usually low and where customers are extremely demanding in terms of the manufacturing quality of products. It faces continual pressure to find suppliers capable of producing products and components to its specifications.
The company also needs to ensure that the designs it chooses to bring to market continue to be in line with evolving public needs.
With a relentless concentration on the introduction of new designs to the market, innovation is central to Alessi’s business model. The company, inspired by its designers, has also pioneered the use of new materials in kitchen and tableware, in particular making extensive use of plastics in high-quality contexts.
Alessi retains no internal designers at all. Despite this, design is the very heart of the Alessi market offering. Finding, commissioning and developing new designs from talented designers is the core of the company’s business. Design, therefore, has an extremely high status within the firm.
All design is outsourced at Alessi. The company does retain a team of two ‘design assistants’ whose role is to facilitate communication between designers and the company’s engineering function to manage the transition from design to production reality. The design assistants have deep technical knowledge, and combine this with extensive experience in bringing designer goods to market. This is essential, says Alberto Alessi, the company's owner, since ‘they know better than the other technicians the importance of the designer, the design aspects to be preserved.’
According to Alberto Alessi, keeping expertise within the organisation is also challenging, particularly at the present time when a number of key figures in the company are approaching retirement age.