Losing clients

This comment is taken verbatim from Bruce Nussbaum's blog on BusinessWeek, as a response to the debate about 'no spec' for design services that has been going on over at Design Observer. It gives rise to many more issues than we have possibly considered, up until now. What do we do about it?

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Dear Mr. Naussbaum,
From the business side. I'm an entrepreneur transitioning my family business and developing a line of furniture. I read your posts about Inside Innovation with great interest as I saw they paralleled my experience trying to make something great with (very) limited resources.
I also considered providing designers the opportunity to submit spec designs. It seemed some designers are desperate for work that they'd work for free, one design firm even offered to.
This forced the question; why would someone (me) pay for design work when designers offer it for free?
Here is my theory as to why this is happening and why designers are so upset;
Supply and demand. I think there are far too many practicing designers just as the demand for and value of their work is declining.
For my business, we decided not to work with any designer. We did not see the value they could provide for the amount of time we would have to spend working with them.
So how did we do the design? Well, many of the firms we talked with highlighted how their process assured successful results. So we researched design processes, constructed one that fit our needs and limitations and executed it ourselves. We learned that much of great design is not talent, but time consuming work that anyone can accomplish if they spend the time.
How do we know the design is great? We used the same tools designers do, focus groups, lead user studies and interviews with potential customers. From these we’ve had universal enthusiasm for the design, some customers even highlighting the design as their main reason for desiring the furniture. If all goes well we’ll be on the market in a year and designers can see one example of how design has become the new “desktop publishing.”
Please don’t say that “design is innovation “ because I don't belive designers have the exclusive rights to creativity.

Posted by: A Lost Client at June 12, 2006 03:19 PM