Caili in wonderland

ALBERTO ALESSI'S "FORMULA" 

Do you use much market research to develop your products?

I use the Formula, a mathematic model that I developed at the beginning of the 1990s to decide if we should put a new prototype into production.

That sounds very scientific, very unpoetic!

The Formula was provoked by my brothers and cousins. They wanted to know why I was taking decisions what to do or not to do. Even I didn’t know. It was done here. [He touches his stomach.] So I put together all 300 projects that I had helped develop—some big successes, balanced by big fiascoes. The idea was to understand the reasons for these very unequal lives, and then predict the reaction of our customers.

I have two central parameters. [He sketches a grid.] One is called SMI. It means sensation, memory, and imagination, and tries to explore what people mean when they say, “Oh, what a beautiful object!” Beauty alone no longer expresses properly the relations of people with an object. You cannot use beauty when you describe a Starck project, for example. The second parameter is called CL, which means communication language. It measures the ability of a product to communicate something like status or values. A gold Rolex watch, for example, conveys wealth, while a Richard Sapper teakettle indicates cultural sensitivity. Each product can be scored 1 to 5 on each parameter. But we still had several products with the same scores, yet with very unequal lives. So I was obliged to add two more parameters: function and price.

Walk me through how some product would rate on this scale.

Let’s take the Philippe Starck squeezer, the Juicy Salif. In the first phase of its life, communication was very strong: a 5. On the function scale, people thought it was an innovation; only later did they discover that it wasn’t working so well! Give it a 4. Its price was about $60, for a score of 4, and its SMI, a 5, so its final score was 18. That meant it should sell about 100,000 pieces per year. A score of 12 is very risky—1,000 to 2,000 pieces. Since the Formula then was not very precise, you could be a bit wrong, and it could be a disaster. Twenty years later, in the Juicy Salif’s second phase, its SMI is the same. [He writes down a 5.] Communication is less. [He writes a 4.] In terms of function, everybody knows it doesn’t work, so that is a 2. Price is still reasonable, but we have introduced so many plastic pieces, it is not as impressive. Give it a 3. Today, it is a 14—about 50,000 units a year.

How accurate is the Formula?

If it is used on existing typologies, where Alessi has an existing product, it is very precise. If we face a new typology, where we don’t have enough experience, like watches, we have to fine-tune it. It is a delicate activity to tune. On existing Alessi typologies, it cannot fail.

What part tends to trip you up?

On the function, we know what works. Same for price. Even in communication, we understand the effect of an object. But where we can misunderstand is in SMI. I can easily be wrong, confusing my personal taste with the taste of my customers.

Do you make the final decisions about products?

Yes. But it’s very precious for me to understand the final score of the Formula. Not to manage by, but to understand the risk.

Does this formula work across cultures?

We do not see important differences among our core customers. They are not design victims, but they are surely not average customers. Their reactions are similar, both in Tokyo and Milan.