IT’S BEEN A WHILE
since we have spoken with one another... PRESS CAMP EDITION
SO....?
Shall we start...?
HOW DID YOU GET YOUR NAME?
Knog came from a bastardised form of the British/Aussie slang expression for brains, noggin. Folks like my Uncle Bob or my first prof would often cut my ideas down with “use your bloomin’ noggin!” I turned their naysaying around and shortened noggin to nog and then gave it the silent, stealthy ‘K’ to make the products kick.
AND...WHY BIKES?
Bikes rock...
THE MOST LUXURIOUS BIKE YOU’VE EVER RIDDEN?
Off the record – when I first started this, 23 years ago, I didn’t ride. In fact I hardly never even rode as a kid. I was a crap rider, always stacking, plus I preferred designing things in my cubby to hooning around. But now I’m a convert cyclist and the whole bloody company rides to work! And I do love my Cinelli. Sleek, effortless, aesthetic. Check out their archive of ads, that include naked girls riding bikes out of walls – still hot.
YOUR IDEA OF HAPPINESS?
You know those mad dreams where you’re standing on a suburban roof and then suddenly, you’ve leapt off and the panic sets in and instead of falling, you’re flying effortlessly and checking out secret and beautiful things you’ve always wanted to see but never been privy to? Well replicating that feeling day-to-day is my idea of happiness. (And winning over 37 international design awards, in particular the Australian design award, is also up there.)
HOW OLD ARE YOU?
23 – Give or take or add 23 years.
FAVOURITE COLOUR?
It’s ever changing but you could say, weekdays it’s the rainbow, Saturday it’s gold or silver and Sunday it’s matte black.
AND...FAVOURITE DESIGNER?
There are many designers that inspire me: Stark, Sottsass, Michael Graves, Marc Newson and Jonathan Ives to name some. They’re all absolutely in love with what they’re doing and prepared to push against their own and everyone else’s imaginings.
CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC?
As an industrial designer I’ve passionately obsessed over objects for… give or take 23 years. These are culturally appropriate, distinct products, ones that make people go “oh yeah!” Actually, what motivates me isn’t necessarily the designers I love – or even – objects of beauty and “designer” products, but rather, objects that help me express who I am, extensions of my personality. Most importantly they ought to make me happy. Like my vintage Faema espresso machine that gives me a perfect coffee each morning, or the standard brown public service case that has held my pencils and paper since art school or the feeling I have when I hear rain on the roof of my shack while my love and I embrace fireside.
I think the strongest design influences are lateral and tell the story of our lives; how we see the world; hopefully the resulting interpretation of these help make a difference to the way others see the world.
HOW DID THE FAMOUS FROG LIGHT COME ABOUT?
Laterally. Squidgy silicone was the magic inroad at the time in mobile phone and surgical equipment design. I took a great material and applied it to a new application. A bunch of awards later and over four million of those little dudes have been manufactured. They’ve now become one of the most widely copied products in the bike industry – with over eight factories other than our own making and selling them in competition to us. Bastards!
DO YOU TRY OUT OTHER BRANDS TO BENCHMARK YOUR OWN STUFF?
No. They tend to benchmark Knog. But seriously, I learnt early on that to be successful you have to be able to lead. And luckily for us original ideas and vision are what we’re good at. You see, for the first few years we built on the success we had with the Frog and manufactured another four light models, the Beetle, Gekko, Skink and Toad that sold world wide throughout 46 countries. At the same time we dabbled in all sorts of things – apparel, wet weather gear, gloves, bags and tools – developing products in categories we knew very little about. Sad to say we also tried a bit of typical bike industry re-branding. Lesson? When we used our creative originality we killed it. These ‘me too’ products collapsed in a miserable mess.
Also, it became obvious that the most effective way of making a difference while fighting those that copy our concepts or products was to always stay ahead of the game by doing what we do best – visioning new ideas, new designs and new ways of seeing the world. You see this desire to make a real difference is in our DNA. Often it means success – occasionally failure – but heck, the risks are worth it. HOW DO YOU TEST YOUR PRODUCTS?
Across all kinds of conditions: aggressively and continuously. Importantly our testing program is designed to take data and implement improvements from every point of the product cycle. This means; during design, prototyping, first sampling, final sampling, at many points during manufacture, prior to shipping and importantly, directly from the global feedback that riders send us.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FROM CONCEPT TO MARKET?
However, it can be faster, much faster/ For example the most recent range of products we’ve been working on are the Blinders. From a retail perspective they allow a diverse design expression, in that one overall form provides a platform for various designs and configurations. With the blinders we wanted to reinvent bike lighting while considering two key issues. Namely;
Quality takes time ...three years is fairly typical.
• Developing a strategy that would allow us to deal with copy products. In this case to provide a framework on which designs and technology could be seasonally updated, to stay fresh and ahead of the game. • Establish some innovative and original features that weren’t available on any other products in this space. We started with a whole range of options, using the acid test: is this a product that I’d want to buy? Does it make me happy? Does it express my personality? Is it a product that everyone would want to own?
We embodied many of the technologies from completely different and unrelated industries, gleaning inspiration from a whole range of objects. One stands out in my memory, the Apple remote control. I remember marvelling at how thin it was. It was made from machined aluminium, yet it still contained batteries and electronics. Blue pad sketches, 3D cad and development drawings all added to the process of development to ensure long term quality and cost effectiveness. In order to make certain that there was absolute continuity between both the product and the retail presence, we tackled the packaging at the same time as the product was being designed. Settling on recycled sugar cane and PET for our packaging material, designing it to present the various blinder lights as objects of beauty in tiny picture frames. It was also imperative that the Blinder was easy to remove without damaging the packaging, enabling in store demonstration.
We work with five factories to manufacture this light: one for the mouldings, one for the electronics, one forming the aluminium covers, another for the packaging and the last for the point of sale. Point of sale makes up one of the most important and often ill-considered keys to retail success. We surveyed over 50 distributors and the number one response to the most important market tool they could use to sell the Knog Blinders was point of sale! And most importantly, the final product works perfectly in situ – on the bike – slim, sleek, creative, they are a subtle extension of the bikes personality.
THE SECRET BEHIND YOUR INNOVATION?
It’s like great sex: passion, experimentation, fearlessness, hard work, spontaneity and humour make an exceptional product and ultimately a great brand. We’ve always been pretty certain that when we launch well-designed products we can make an impact with the product design alone, but what we’ve learnt is that design makes up only about 10-20% of what it is to run a successful brand. The other 80-90% are equally important: marketing/sales, logistics, shipping, public relations, advertising, point of sale, quality assurance and consumer service.
SMOKING. GIRLS KISSING. THE BALLS. THE BOOBS.
FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS THERE YOU HAD GIRLS KISSING, PEOPLE SMOKING AND EGYPTIANS DRESSED AS INDIANS – WHAT GIVES?
We discovered pretty early on that we couldn’t afford to focus on product design alone. We had to learn how to sell products, not just design them. Often the photo-shoots and the results were unscripted and spontaneous, but always driven by a sense of humour with the simple principle of not taking ourselves too seriously. We’ve also had a lot of fun illustrating simple principles like waterproofness, for lights, strength for locks or lifetime warrantees.
These influences and many others help us articulate the original, urban, all bike story behind Knog. Our stories have always been about the riders and the sub cultures of the city. And the thing about all the people we have photographed and written about - they are real people and real happenings and you know, the more real, the less we have edited our stories, the more feedback we’ve got - positive and negative… but one thing is certain, we are being talked about!
Like our product design our cultural brand influences are lateral. Underground fashion and music, artists like Wes Lang, Mad Magazine film makers like Glendyn Ivin, the writings of F Scott Fitzgerald and Bike Snob, the-late-great Humphrey Lyttelton and most importantly the freedom feeling you get flying two wheels through the city streets.
This year has seen another lateral shift in the brand language we are using. Check out the imagery created for the Blinders by New York based artist Karan Singh and Toby & Pete’s 3D work for our locks.
WHAT’S NEXT
YOUR MOTTO?
Hells Bells. Knog has done bags, panniers, clothing, gloves and locks. We love our lights and locks – this is where we shine – but just quietly – we might also have a crack at pumps.
Thin, beautiful and unobtrusive. And love the one you’re with.
www.knog. com.au