Summary
Decorating your home is big business - in the UK and around the world. In China and India the home decor market is evolving fast - but will the result be a global homogenous style? Who sets the trends? And what do you do if your products lose their fashionable edge? Evan Davis and guests discuss the volatile world of design.
Guests: Kelly Hoppen, founder Kelly Hoppen Interiors Andrew Graham, CEO Graham and Brown Lois Jacobs, Global CEO Fitch
Producer: Rosamund Jones.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this program. In this edition of the bottom line, Evan Davis and guest discuss the business of interior design. |
| 0:06.7 | Hello and welcome to the program. For many of us, the closest we get to personal creative expression is in the way we choose to decorate our home. |
| 0:15.7 | And it is the business of helping us do that, which is the subject of our discussion today, design and decor, |
| 0:21.2 | manufacture and sale, all to fickle consumers trying to be as individual as possible, while |
| 0:26.7 | also being highly fashionable. I have three people steeped in the world of design with me. |
| 0:31.9 | Kelly Hoppen, founder and chief executive of Kelly Hoppen interiors. |
| 0:36.3 | Andrew Graham, chief executive of Graham and Brown, |
| 0:39.1 | wallpaper primarily, and also Lois Jacobs, global CEO of Fitch, which is a design agency. |
| 0:46.1 | And we'll take a few minutes to meet each of them. Kelly, let's start with you, Star of Dragons |
| 0:50.8 | Den now, of course, as well. Just tell us about your company, what it actually |
| 0:55.5 | consists of. Well, the company I started at 16 and a half was the interior design company, which is |
| 1:01.4 | the mother of the business, where we run anything from 50 to 60 projects at one time globally. |
| 1:07.7 | Then we have the publishing, which is the books, which we bring out every two years, |
| 1:11.8 | where we choose maybe 12 or 15 projects from around the world to put it in. We have a school |
| 1:16.8 | where we teach interior design. We have product design because we have product and shops that |
| 1:22.6 | are franchised all over the world. So it's anything to do with design, basically. |
| 1:31.3 | Give us the story about how it started, because you hinted there as 16 and a half. |
| 1:34.7 | That's quite a young. Everyone laughed about the half, but I actually was 16 and a half. |
| 1:42.5 | At 16 and a half, I was offered to do up a kitchen for my stepfather's friend from the war. |
| 1:46.1 | And then I had a friend who was having a relationship with a very famous Grand Prix racing driver. |
| 1:49.0 | At 17, I had my own home |
| 1:50.8 | because my father had been killed |
... |
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