BUSINESS 101

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tendering

Paul Priestman is co-founder of design group Priestmangoode, which operates in branding, transport, environment, product and packaging design for companies across the globe. The £5m-turnover fi rm designed the interior of Heathrow’s Terminal 5, the most cost-effective budget hotel room in the world for Accorhotels and award-winning interiors for many of the world’s leading airlines and aircraft manufacturers

EEP READING THE INDUSTRY NEWS, fi nd out who’s won work and look at their tenders. Work we could do might be buried in a myriad of other deliverables, so it’s worth aligning with big manufacturers as well as brands. SMEs have to recognise they have a role to play and that there’s a value in teaming up to form consortia. We also bid for projects independently, though, and when we do we devote our full resources to winning the work.

Paul Priestman is a member of the Royal College of Art Council. He participated in the Prime Minister’s trade delegation to China, fl ying the fl ag for the British design industry

ICK EVERY BOX when writing a tender document. It’s something I think the creative industries in particular are guilty of not doing. If there are health and safety questions, answer them properly. You have to ensure that all the people making the decisions trust you, an especially big hurdle when you’re trying to break into a new industry. Answer the more mundane questions fully and give yourself enough time to submit the tender.

OU CAN’T RELY ON THE DOMESTIC MARKET. We don’t have any UK clients at the moment. The world is our market place. We actively push into new sectors. We’ve leapfrogged into different industries, from aviation to hotels to cruise ships, and applied learnings from one sector to the next.

ONFIDENCE IS EVERYTHING, but British fi rms have a lot to be confi dent about. Companies from engineering and other sectors are immensely well respected. I was in China recently and an engineer pointed out the quality of a British measuring tool. I’d never even heard of the company that made it. The UK, and London in particular, has an international outlook, which can be critical in winning clients’ confi dence.

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