Successful Partnering Through EEN - The Japanese Manufacturer and the Swedish Designer

The Japanese Manufacturer and the Swedish Designer

On 18 December, 2013, a leading Japanese design company specializing in stationeries, Designphil released a plastic zipper bag with a Swedish design pattern in Japan.  Their product will be sold all over Japan, in major lifestyle shops and in design-oriented stationery shops, such as TOKYU HANDS, LOFT, Itoya, and so on.

Swedish designer unit, Edholm Ullenius have offered their 12 design patterns to Designphil. The designer’s name will be clearly stated on sales collateral and the product webpage of Designphil.

Designphil produces both product and commercial design for communication tools such as letter pads, greeting cards, coloured paper, clips, and so on.  They often have won design awards in Japan and abroad (Design Plus Award, Germany.) They have an affiliated company focusing on distribution of personal stationery, MDS.

First contact of the Designphil to the EU-Japan Centre (EEN Japan) was made on 9 November, 2012. At the end of November, Designphil submitted their partnership requests to the EU-Japan Centre. The EU-Japan Centre submitted the request to the Enterprise Europe Network, and simultaneously informed the Scandinavian EEN colleagues of the request.

In spite of the holiday season, Swedish EEN contact point, Invest in Skåne AB responded quickly and picked up 5 designers as potential partners.

At the end of December 2012, Designphil made a tentative decision on a designer, and began discussing the contract details. In February 2013, Designphil signed a design contract with a Swedish designer unit, Edholm Ullenius, as a result of Enterprise Europe Network partnering support. 

“We had a very limited time to search for potential designers who could offer us Nordic design.  Enterprise Europe Network has done a great job finding a perfect designer for our products in a month.” said Mr. Shinsuke Nakamura, corporate office and producer in design center, Designphil.

According to Mr. Nakamura, in the usual designer search process, it often takes them 3 months to find a good designer for their products.  In the search process, they use all available channels such as agents, personal networks of their employees, internet, and etc. The most important factor for Designphil was to find a perfect designer in a limited timeframe. They were originally planning to release a new product in July 2013, one of the 2 stationery release peaks in Japan, at the occasion of biggest stationery tradeshow “International Stationery and Office Products Fair Tokyo.” (However, with other business factors, they changed their product release plan to December, the second peak of stationery sales.)

“We record all activities and time spent for the project for cost management and performance measurement.  If we can ask the 3rd party to search the designers, and if it is faster than the usual process, it would be idealistic for us.  EEN offered us the perfect solution for the partnership search.”
“More important than efficiency, it was necessary for us to find a GOOD designer, who can make our product looks attractive and edgy.”
“I think our expectations of the designer are well described in the partnership request form, and accordingly, the Swedish EEN partner picked up good candidates for us”
“We have in-house designers.  However, for this zipper bag project, we definitely needed a taste of Nordic culture.  The design of the Edholm Ullenius was beyond our expectation, and made our product great.  If we found a good feedback from consumers about the Edholm Ullenius design, we will apply their design to other products, and definitely would like to collaborate with them again.”

Source: EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation – EEN Japan