Why Designers Should Care About Supply Chain
Designers have spent decades focusing on the end game, identity systems, logos, packaging, websites, campaigns, etc. Yes, we’ve moved upstream slightly into brand strategy with positioning, audiences, and messaging. But let’s be honest.That no longer sets design studios apart.
Masterclass: The Design Business Reset
The real competitive advantage today? It’s buried in something most creative teams would never dream of touching: Supply chain optimization. In 2020, I had a conversation with CEO Jon Bostock, and something he said reframed everything for me.
Interview with Jon Bostock: Why The Creatives Will be the Most Important People in the Room
Supply Chain is a Design Problem, Not Just An Operations Issue
Jon said that the best way to produce a quality product at a great price is to reduce friction in the supply chain.This is not an operations challenge. It’s a design challenge. Design should not begin with a package, it should begin in the factory. When designers only shape the end product, they’re decorating the end of a system they didn’t influence. They’re working downstream, reacting instead of leading. The real opportunity is to rethink the entire path, reducing shipping costs with smarter design. Getting involved in conception rather than the end stages of the process. I’ll explain more below.
conception → manufacturing → packaging → shipping → delivery → use
Masterclass: The Design Business Reset
The Future of Design is Systems Level Innovation
Here is what Jon’s company, Truman’s came up with:
The majoity of household cleaning product are single use large plastic bottles filled with 90% water. These large plastic containers, like laundry detergent are then shipped on trucks across countries, using massive amounts of fuel and creating massive amounts of plastic waste at the end of use. just to basically move water around.
Jon and his partner Alex Reed, saw this as a design problem and they came up with a new line of non toxic cleaning products to tackle laundry, glass cleaner, dishes, bathrooms etc. Direct to consumer the product comes in a small 5” x 1” squre package containing 5 viles each one with a concentrated liquid for different areas of the house, the consumer adds a few drops and some water to a spray bottle and voila. No shipping water. No plastic single use containers. I thought this was one of the smartest things I’ve seen in a long time and I agreed with Jon that in the future, the creatives will be the most important people in the room.
Traditionally, packaging has been kept big for shelf presence, not logistics efficiency, not earth-friendly, not cost-effective. These aren’t just operational inefficiencies, they are design failures but companies don’t see it. From brand and marketing perspective, when the system changes, the brand story will rewrite Itself. When you redesign how a product works, the message and differentiation becomes obvious. A smaller box tells a bigger story. A simpler system creates a compelling promise. You don’t need to talk about sustainability and all of this jargon from a marketing perspective, you build it in. This is what a brand for the future looks like.
In the future, I believe design agencies will go beyond what a product or packaging looks like or what the marketing message says. Designers have the Design Thinking skillset to rethink entire systems and create truly inspring brand stories. It goes way beyong putting things in cardboard boxes. It changes the world and you as a design consultancy will truly stand out. Are you ready?
If this sounds interesting, I’m going to unpack it further and show you how to get started in my upcoming Masterclass: The Design Business Reset February 10th-12th
