Sanyo Electric Co Ltd explained its product design concept at a press conference Oct 17, 2008, the the same day that the company started selling its products at the MoMA Design Store in Omotesando, Tokyo.
The presentation took place at a restaurant that, known as an organic cafe, is popular among young women. The restaurant is located on the first basement level of the Omotesando fashion building in which the MoMA Design Store is a tenant on the third floor, producing an atmosphere different from that of a normal product presentation.
"'Unsophisticated,' 'lacking uniformity,' 'no refinement' and 'not fitting interior designs.' Our product designs used to be described like this," said Masato Shimizu, chief of the Advanced Design Center at Sanyo Corporate Marketing HQ, harshly criticizing past product designs.
Comments on Sanyo's product designs, collected by a survey a few years ago, were "devastating," he said. The attitudes of the employees started to change in 2005, which the company positioned as the year of its "third establishment." And, in this year, the company set "Think GAIA" as a company-wide theme.
Sanyo began to adopt such concepts as harmony and consistency to its product designs after advocating the consistent company-wide theme that is aimed at harmonization and coexistence with the global environment.
"Our product design had partly been aimed at differentiating our products from the others' at stores, but we began to place our focus on how far our products can fit in the scenes where our customers actually use them," Shimizu said.
The package design of its "eneloop" nickel-metal-hydride secondary battery, for example, was drastically changed from that of the other existing battery packages. Instead of indicating performance values using large characters, Sanyo simply arranged the product logo on the package.
The package is made of a single material, recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate), while the existing packages includes multiple materials such as paper, PET and aluminum.
"We designed the package assuming that users will use it as a case for the batteries, but it became easier to recycle at the same time," Shimizu said.
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