Just reading an article about the Chevrolet Volt Hybrid and apart from the chronically high price point it started out in prototype forms a muscle bound street machine with loads of appeal.. And now looks like a Vauxhall.
In an age where design thinking has been such a buzz word it certainly appears to have fallen foul of price point error and complete misread of the opening Market for hybrid machines.
Ageist marketing foul
Today we need to get the Market level and rrp absolutely (so they tell me) right in order to boost recovery and ramp up regeneration of quality local industry. And agepoint destination really is up for a rethink.
Yep that’s right… Globalisation is reversing out in many of the gassed up sectors and yet retail and manufacture share the same ability to narrow market appeal rather than expand it.
So how come manufacturing still thinks inside the box when it comes to energy saving technology and destination market? Why do we have to be 60 something in order to appreciate (nay afford) electro powered autos?
I remember the fall of auto design in UK during the eighties while the Germans grabbed the opportunity with both hands. While we outsourced ‘Triumph Acclaim’ bodyshells from Honda. which were frankly a design failure at every level (funny that, can’t think why? Considering we sourced them from our main adversary… ).
Volks Wagon hatched the Golf no less.
Today just as the near sighted and yet fashionable terminology ‘design thinking’ fails to ignite the real design industry of retail and light the way indisputably, so too does the lack of price point design fail the ecology, the wider consumer and UK economy combined.
Recover undeniable Designnovation leadership
Uk and London is still the design HUB of Europe and for many, the world. I believe it.
Recovery will work for UK if it is centred around driving innovation and new practice networking across all groups and ages. Linear concept, lateral solutions and multiple linear market placement is what will sell our economy around the corner of truly meaningful social consumerism and recovery.
Perhaps it still suits the few boardroom honchoes to entrench the retail design mechanism in plots that are touching on the new yet remain truly past century… that stagnates so many in so many different ways… by design, non-adventure and misconcept.
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Nick Garrett 
