All this has been a great adventure.
Entrepreneurship in Brazil is for the few, with apologies for the hackneyed phrase. Ours is a niche activity – authorship design. If we look only at the size of the market left to us, it would be impossible to sail forward with this boat, launched in 2000. The beginning, as always, was difficult and we had to believe that the route we had chosen was the right one, as the financial returns would take a while to appear.
The fact is that over these long years we managed to find a differential that keeps us active and sought by suppliers, partners, and clients who honor us: estudiobola delivers what is ordered. I am referring to several factors that ran from contemporary design, a brand with a polished identity and finishing, as seen at fairs and launch events in Brazil and abroad. There are mishaps, such as when we have to deal with service or technical assistance problems. In these cases, we act with transparency to resolve problems as quickly as possible and continue working. This positioning created trust and made us reliable as a company.
This credibility is an asset we can use to develop new projects with the suppliers who stayed with us throughout, and to access others who know our history and invest in our ideas. Without good manufacturers, industrial design is nonexistent. Furthermore, we are proud to list our suppliers as the best in the market. Design requires both price and quality; without these two aspects it becomes applied art, and we are not here to be displayed in art galleries.
It has not been easy, we began as a two-person team and today we are dozens along this chain: employees, manufacturers, retailers and representatives. Presently we are more businesspeople than designers, but this is a natural route in the management and contracts process which we didn’t learn as academics – we are
architects. The fact is that we really like strategy, planning and commerce on the same level as our creations. From an informal conversation among friends, we began an undertaking which is today responsible for hundreds of jobs linked to our work. I never imagined becoming a businessperson; I just wanted to design…
The frontiers on which we work are now international, and we seem to begin all over again. Each step reached outside the country represents an immense pleasure, whether attaining a license for major brands, supplying furniture to other countries or signing a partnership agreement with an excellent manufacturer, capable of producing our creations with techniques we never imagined. Anxiety is a word we are unfamiliar with; we know the time needed and the steps required to become successful internationally.
What matters is to look back on our trajectory with a lot of pride, since each achievement is costly and represents a battle we won. We are pleased with our professional choices and this book documents this process we love and call Design.
Enjoy!