Reposted from The Globe and Mail
Dwell magazine, should you not be aware, is the type of publication that talks about the interface between applied art and design. It’s beautiful, with a matte cover and warm hues.
It’s the kind of publication that will alert readers to the appeal of Marc Sadler’s Twiggy table lamp, designed for Foscarini, the Italian lighting company. Or the fun, if confusing, stools from Wannekes, made to look like wood but constructed of steel.
At this moment Ed Boyd is holding a copy of Dwell, which he slides across a conference table, eager to point out a full-page advertisement not for some breakthrough design company, but rather a computer maker famous for selling direct to consumers. The back-cover ad is fashion-focused: a sleek model, Wei Chiung (pictured below), in a black-and-white shoot by top-drawer British portrait photographer Nadav Kandar. Immaculate attention has been paid to airborne hair and high style.
It’s the usual fashion drill — except for the fact that the model happens to be holding a laptop, the whisper-thin Adamo, just launched by Dell Inc.
Mr. Boyd is the design mind Dell turned to 18 months ago and presented with the substantial task of changing the way the consumer thinks about the Dell brand. Superficially, this comes as a surprise, given Mr. Boyd’s neatly carved hair and his taupe windbreaker and more conventional accounting appearance, if one were to seize a stereotype.
As vice-president, consumer design, based at the company’s headquarters in Round Rock, Tex., he’s charged with getting the consumer to reimagine Dell.
“When I think about the PC industry it reminds me of the cellphone business 10 years ago,” he says, by which he means “giant Star Trek crappy phones.”
When he thinks about the old Dell he envisions the “Dell grey box. $399 after rebate.”
The new Dell is all about consumer focus, personalization and emotion, in which love trumps utility.
It’s a gamble, particularly amid a global downturn in information technology spending. Dell’s revenue declined by $13.4-billion (U.S.) in the fourth quarter of fiscal ‘09. Full-year revenue collapsed to $61.1-billion. And investors await the turnaround meant to be delivered by Michael Dell himself when he returned to run the firm two years ago.
In such an environment, it seems folly to launch the Adamo — “The world’s thinnest laptop” — at a base price of $2,499 (Canadian), even if it does have appealingly sculpted, scalloped key caps for comfortable typing.
Mr. Boyd, who came to Dell from Nike, bats back concerns about going luxury in a constrained economy. The Adamo, he says, is meant to cast a “brand halo” across the Dell lineup, “signalling to the market that this pinnacle of design is something that they are going to see top to bottom.”
That design aesthetic, he says, was born from consumer feedback.
“Everyone who had a desktop told us they hated it,” he says. Consumers would say, “Boy it would be great if you took that product and made it look as though it really belongs in the home.”
Accomplishing that meant thinking of the computer category the way electronics makers are increasingly thinking of televisions and such.
“We really wanted to blend technology and lifestyle in a more emotional way,” he says, holding out a bamboo sleeve that fits smoothly around the curvature of Dell’s Studio Hybrid desktop, dubbed both “sexy” and “über-cute” by Wired magazine.
Behind the scenes, Dell’s roster of five or so in-house designers has exploded to a near-130. What the company calls its “retail reach” has suddenly blossomed to more than 24,000 retail access points. And its connection to the artists community has resulted in its “Design Studio,” which invites purchasers to personalize their laptops with the works of a variety of funky artists, from South Africa’s Siobhan Gunning, to U.S. graffiti artists Mike Ming and Tristan Eaton, and Canada’s own cool king, Bruce Mau. (Canadian consumers will be offered limited online options at the end of April. The full Design Studio will be available to Canadian shoppers in August.)
“If you think about Dell historically, they haven’t been known for their innovation and design,” says Bill Kreher, technology analyst with Edward Jones in St. Louis, Mo. “It’s been more about providing [products] for cost-conscious consumers.”
As Mr. Kreher sees it, the company shift was a necessary move. Dell has always had what Mr. Kreher describes as a “strong foothold” with the enterprise market — about 82 per cent of the product offerings are sold to business. “If Dell wants to move the needle they need to increase their traction with the consumer,” he says. (Mr. Kreher currently has a “Buy” recommendation on the stock.)
He notes that the 24,000 retail outlets has exploded from 13,000 a mere nine months ago, signalling that Dell is dead serious about making inroads here. “Consumers want to touch and feel the product and take it home at the time of purchase,” he says.
Dell’s own research bears this out: Mr. Boyd says that 40 per cent of consumers surveyed by the company said they would not buy a PC unless they could caress it.
But landing in the retail channel among the HPs and Lenovos makes it difficult to differentiate one offering from another. “It’s tougher and tougher to have your product shine relative to others,” says Mr. Kreher. “Michael [Dell] has talked about product lust and trying to create an Apple type of feel. I think it’s easier said than done.”
Making the Dell lineup shine is Mr. Boyd’s job. He slides over a Studio XPS 16 laptop, with anodized aluminum detailing and a leather “binding,” for lack of a better word, that gives the purchaser the feel of carrying a leather portfolio.
“If you set this against a MacBook Pro it would smoke it,” he says, making the point that its computing power is a given, not to mention the RGB LED display. It’s a rare reference to the technical offerings amid an hour-long conversation. “When I buy a car today probably the last thing I do is pop the hood and look at the engine,” he says.
Arrayed throughout the conference room are numerous high-design offerings, made one by one as they are ordered. I tell Mr. Boyd that I would like to design my own.
“You will be able to do that,” he says. “Some day.”
top
1 A Dell Week | Coded Style on May 12, 2009:
[...] pays off for them with market share and good reviews. They’ve gone from a handful of designers to over 130 and over 200 designs from their Dell Design [...]
top