Sheffield cutlery is renowned for its quality, but Taylor's Eye Witness [then called Harrison Fisher] had become vulnerable to increased competition from European producers – particularly those in Germany, which have an advantage of perceived superior quality and design – and from the Far East with its low costs.
Although Harrison Fisher had its own brand - 'Taylor's Eye Witness' - much of its business came from providing supermarkets and department stores such as Tesco, Sainsbury and John Lewis with own label products. However, the supermarkets ability to source cheap own label products from the Far East meant that the company’s business was slowly disappearing.
It was also at the mercy of supermarket and department store buyers. ‘If a buyer said I think you should have some pink packaging, we would go and buy some pink packaging even though we did not think it fitted in with what we wanted to do,’ says managing director Alastair Fisher.
And in addition, the company had lost its way in terms of design following the death of designer Robert Welch with whom it had worked for thirty years. ‘When Robert died, our design input died with him. We knew that we had a weakness in design. We knew that things were changing in the world and that we had to do something about it, but we weren’t sure what to do,’ says Fisher.
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Alistair Fisher discusses the business challenges.
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The solution was to join Designing Demand Immerse, a strategic design advice and business growth service run as part of the Design Council’s Designing Demand programme. This would provide a team of top designers led by a mentor and would suggest a course of action.
Designing Demand is part of the Government’s national package of publicly funded business support products, Solutions for Business.
