US designer E. Rachael Baird, owner of eight-strong Baltimore-based Tilt Studio, opened her London ‘office’ with the aim of scooping work for the 2012 Olympics. She attended a Designer Breakfast earlier this year and we were impressed with her enterprising and business-like attitude and her brave drive to expand her business globally to the UK and beyond – and in a recession. We know what the business climate is like here in the UK (tough and with pressure on fees) and had a feeling that US designers with their bigger market may earn more than we do here. It was intriguing to find out how she runs a design business in the UK as well as a team in the US. So we invited her to tell an audience of UK design business-owners.
In her conversation with Rachael, Amanda Tatham, a business-design consultant and co-founder of Designer Breakfasts, asked “Does business here in the UK live up to expectations?”
“British designers are well respected,” Rachael said. “They have a reputation for being trustworthy. I have spent the last three years here in the UK proving myself. I am getting a lot of meetings with clients, but in the UK people are very polite and there’s a possibility that sometimes I may get the meetings because prospective clients don’t want to be rude by refusing them. But the UK government has been very helpful. They help find business and opportunities for you. I have found it beneficial working through government agencies that are there to help you. The US government also offers help to UK designers.”
How do you seek out opportunities?
“Through perseverance, hard work, and being fearless. I seek, find, destroy — I go directly to them rather than waiting for a pitch. I will call a CEO for a meeting. I was born a business person.”
Can small design businesses operate globally?
“Design is moving towards international business model. The American perception of UK design works well in America. UK design has more structure; it is cleaner and more exact. In LA and New York there is a British design style and American designers are moving to Europe. People are becoming more global and broadening their horizons.”
Rachael sells herself as an American designer with a different approach. “In the US there is a huge food culture, it is not a huge market in the UK yet.” She feels that helping to share the US model to UK people will be beneficial over time.
Are you working on any new ways of risk and reward? Are businesses opening up to this?
“I think the model of risk and reward is a beautiful concept. But I think in the US clients may be reluctant to do this. It is not always a benefit to the business; they want to receive and own everything and pay for the work up front. I am working on my own risk and reward enterprise and hope to sell my restaurant concept to an internationally large chain.”
How can you run three international offices employing fewer than 10 people, alone and remotely?
“I am first a salesperson and the creative aspects get farmed out to my design staff. I require all the designers I work with to utilise time tracking applications like Harvest and Backpack that allow you to organise your information and share it with your team, they are tools for efficiency.
“Most designers want to be designers but will never be successful unless they can sell and designers that own their own businesses rarely employ more than three people so they still have time to design. But in America design talent agencies are cropping up just like talent agencies for actors. They hire out designers for companies, for example Virgin will hire a whole team for a specific project. It is another way of working. The talent agencies also help designers seek work.”
And lastly Amanda asked her: “So how do you figure out a way of making money while you sleep?”
Rachael said that firstly by building up her business and client base in the US, she has been able to hire a managing director to manage the business side of things while she is here. With her expansion to London she hopes to sell her restaurant concept here and then with a pending further expansion to Shanghai, she’ll be able to make money while she sleeps across the different time zones. “We work with global brands such as Compass Group, Starbucks, Subway and McDonalds, so why shouldn’t we be a global business?”
Rachel concluded that US design businesses command higher fees than in the UK and that this was likely to be because the US market is so much bigger. However, she has shown us that if you already have a global client base, as she does, that it doesn’t matter where you work from on the globe, or how large your business is in terms of employees. In fact Rachel’s employees don’t work in one studio and she can bring in more people as projects demand. Her business model with its large, established global clients and flexible, established creative resources can be run remotely from any location.
And as we have seen from Rachael’s example, a heightened spirit, drive and determination can be the keys to a global income.