About Design IQ

Our History and Philosophy

History of Design IQ

Design IQ was Founded by fashion sports designer Guy Mathiot in 1987 – so the company now has over 30 years experience of working with major brands worldwide.

Having started out designing mostly fashion sports clothing, from running apparel to ski-wear, and textile equipment such as tents, we have now focussed on being specialists in designing and producing bags and luggage.

With a strong background in fashion design we broadly focused upon markets where our styling skills and understanding of performance textile products could benefit our customers.

 

Design philosophy of Design IQ

Design IQ is a practical and thoughtful design company. Guy Mathiot, the creative director of Design IQ says “I insist that every product that Design IQ develops is aesthetically pleasing, elegant or has a certain ‘flow’ to it’s appearance.”

“I am impatient with design that does not work – and am my own toughest critic when I see a design on paper or a sample that does not work well. Every day we seek to be better at what we do and love to meet the end customers face to face and hear about their experience with our bags – that way we can evolve products season on season and create products we are proud of.”

“We subscribe broadly to the Ten principles of good design by Dieter Rams – basically we believe in aesthetically pleasing purposeful design.”

“We work hard with our suppliers and customers as a team to get the price ‘just right’ and consider the smallest details in light of both aesthetics and cost with the same attention to detail. The end objective is to make a product we are confident will sell, and represent the clients brand narrative.”

“With every new project we start from the perspective – “what do you want the customer to experience and benefit from your product?”. At the beginning of the design process we need to understand what your brand’s narrative will be – this is very important. We seek to learn about the clients channels to market, and what competitive advantage you seek long before we get involved in the styling.”

“Our objective is to understand the design objectives in the users terms  – and then we can design with confidence that we hitting the commercial objectives while we ( have fun!) doing the design itself.”

“The design process we generally go through is explained on the homepage of this website –  basically we seek to learn about the clients commercial objectives – what they want to supply the end customer with and how they want the designs to solve their problems. Only after we have thoroughly done our groundwork do we start designing.”

“We believe that a process of team work with the client produces the best results- so our methods of working are very “step by step” involving the client all along the way.”

“Once we have created a product for a client the best sight we ever see is a customer in the high street using one of our bags… and the best commercial result is a trade customer who places repeat orders because of good ‘sell through’.”osophy

Business Philosophy:

Design IQ believe good business is “no surprises” business . You will find our style very direct and to the point. We do not hide anything and we set out to make sure you know what is involved at every stage so you can be confident you can afford the project from the start. We put everything in writing in advance.

Bottom line is we will be very clear about commercial issues, are open to discuss what suits you best, and will agree everything ‘up front’ with you so everything about what we are going to do – when we are doing it and what will be delivered – is transparent in advance. We will treat you the way we would like to be treated ourselves.

You can read about our Founder Guy Mathiot on his page