With the design project that we chose, we put our major brand on the table, which was, you know, a risk for us, if we got it wrong. Also we put the most that we could afford to invest in design. Now at that time, we earmarked about 40,000 pounds. Now to a big company that doesn’t sound like very much money, but to us that was essentially our year’s profit. But it was a figure that if things went wrong we could survive from it and that was important. In the end we actually spent quite a bit more than that – we spent nearer 80-90,000 pounds – but in terms of return that paid for itself within six months. We set ourselves a target in that if we gained one more product into any of the major retailers, the project would pay for itself. In the event, we got two products into the top two major retailers and hence the payback was huge. And importantly I think, the issue of having good design is that good design lasts the test of time and we are still benefiting from that financially three or four years further down and that will continue for may years to come.
Firstly we we’re able to increase our selling prices by something like 25%, which clearly had a huge benefit to our profit margins. Over and above that though, our sales are also increasing by something like 25% compound year on year and we expect that to continue and in fact may even accelerate further in the next few years and one of the reasons why we think they’ll accelerate further is because we’re now using the design to start talking to Europe. Prior to design we were very much a UK based manufacturer selling to UK companies. We’re now starting the dialogues with other big European retailers and even having dialogues as far a-field as Australia, which is a direct result of the design process.