A moment with … Michelle Alice Tan, founder of DESIGNation
As a former design and architecture student, Michelle understood early on that there was a need in the market to be filled, a space to bring together and incubate designers.
Rushing in from a morning stock-run in Bangsar, Michelle Alice Tan effortlessly looks the designer part with her brown plastic framed glasses and monochromatic silhouette contrasted with a canary yellow scarf with white polka dots – which coincidentally is the colour scheme of the DESIGNation pop-up store at Publika‘s Art Row.
DESIGNation is the first online and retail store in Malaysia to support only local designers and aspires to do more than just sell — but to serve as an incubation space for local talent.
We sit in the corner of the shop on a Kedai Bikin big bend chair and a Wood & Steel tri-stool. Next to us, a wooden TV console where an elongated Ahnya-Chi kebaya cushion and Ficus & Jars terrariums are displayed against the white mount board wall where multi-coloured GOOD PAIR Medium Rare high socks are strung. In short, a collection of beautiful locally crafted items to tempt any impulsive shopper — a weakness Michelle has admitted to as she finds herself purchasing wares from her designers as the new arrivals continue to pour in.
DESIGNation started off with three designers: The Alphabet Press, Wood & Steel and HWA.
My whole family is in business except for me … I’m in design. But I’ve always had this inclination to be business savvy, which is something that lacks in our design education in Malaysia. We are not taught how to be business people, how to build a brand around yourself or your products and how to sell yourself, which is crucial. That’s something I’m learning as I go along. But my business partner, Kartina, she has a lot of experience in terms of starting her own company, so she handles the business side of things in this partnership.
The idea for DESIGNation … came about when I was still studying. I was part of a non-for-profit organisation called ThinkLab, which had a huge impact in my life. ThinkLab was essentially a design research organisation that did conferences and workshops – something that wasn’t done at all back in 2009. That exposed me to what the design industry really needed in Malaysia which is more support.
Eventually I knew … I was going to do something on my own and that’s when I quit my full time job last year atGenovasi as a teacher and in-house designer to do this.
The decision was quite hard to make … in terms of how to start DESIGNation. There are so many ways to start a company that could support local designers. I realised I spent a lot of months going back and forth trying to figure out what would work — and I figured, “screw it, let’s just start something”.
DESIGNation is now an online platform … and also a retail shop. We aim to support local designers through retailing and incubating. That was the rough idea from the beginning. I started out online in September last year just to get immediate feedback in terms of how the idea would work and if people were open to the idea.
DESIGNation aspires to boost the local creative economy and to prevent losing upcoming designers to neighbouring countries.
People were actually approaching DESIGNation … to put their stuff online and we were getting a lot of good feedback. We realised, “yes, that’s great, but how do we move furniture online?” Because we focus on home décor, furniture, accessories and stationery, we realised it’s quite tough for people to spend a large amount of money on a piece of furniture they have not tried in person.
I started out with three designers … back in September 2014. We have about 14 designers now. We’re growing quite well. We’re trying to tap into the interior design industry to try to supply local furniture to local interior designers.
The big plan for DESIGNation … wasn’t just to be just a retail shop or an online commerce store. We wanted to be able to help designers from scratch: going into production, prototyping, branding, packaging — the whole series. But we realised, even if we have the ability to help them, we don’t have financial resources to help them do prototyping. So we thought, “okay, let’s focus on the very end bit, retailing” and to find out if we were good at selling on their behalf on the first place. But the big plan is to do the whole production line, which we hope to kick off next year.
Right now, designers are sort of scattered … everyone is doing their own thing. We wanted to fill that gap and create a space where everyone can congregate together like a meeting point and feel at home. You would find that in Singapore and China where they have the Singapore National Design Centre and 798 Art Zone in Beijing. You won’t find any of that in Malaysia. We don’t have an area dedicated to design or arts, and that’s something that we need here.
If we don’t do it … no one’s going to do it. We need more support in terms of supporting local designers. If not, what will happen is local designers will move to Singapore or they will switch industries altogether.
On personal branding … I’m not a guru or anything, but I think the thing is to find your niche. It’s very, very important. If you create a product who you don’t know who you’re selling to, it will not work. You need to understand who is your customer — what do they do, what are their behaviours like, what is the decision making point in their life that they will be willing to buy something. Every designer in our store has their niche. Find your niche and you’ll find your brand.
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