Centor

After a 15 month design journey we can say WHY we do what we do. It is a self-evident truth that the world is beautiful; at Centor we believe in connecting people with the world outside. HOW we do this is by creating inside-outside living without the compromises, by making beautiful products designed for people and by engineering for nature to create long lasting delight. WHAT is our 20yr goal? To become the world's best, connecting people with the world outside. For the first time in 64yrs each employee in 11 time zones understands and can state our purpose. For each of our 5 stakeholder layers we have 3 brand promises. To make these come true, we have identified 75 strategic projects, passionately owned by 45 employees.

During our design journey we interviewed 300 people. We learned that our ultimate customer Wendy is the core decision maker.In the high-end residential market she engages Stuart the Architect who awards a Contract to Jim the custom homebuilder. Jim purchases from Bill the door dealer. Barry manages the installation and service. Although the dealer purchases from us, they are a valued Channel Partner. Our people understand the customer is Wendy.During the 300 interviews we gained key insights from Wendy, Stuart, Jim, Bill and Barry. Wendy wants to be proud of the home she built. Stuart wants to creatively express without compromise. We share their stories through our internal newsletter The Centor World.

Over 15mths we designed a brand new strategy delighting our new customer Wendy. Our selected channel to market will be 350 premium door dealers, servicing Architects and custom homebuilders globally. We iteratively experimented using the business model canvas, interviewed using customer journey maps and refining product briefs until we could illustrate the entire business completely aligned to our purpose (connecting people with the world outside). Only then did we start designing and prototyping products and services. This was new. The hardest part is parking ingrained habits that had made us successful and instead using empathy to discover insights into our customers, their needs and problems. 

Centor is a design-led organisation. We have identified our customer, designed our strategy, our product, our channels to market, our brand promise, our culture, our employee awards, our internal comms to integrate on a single, exciting and fulfilling purpose - connecting people with the world outside.We use design to create processes like our automated Centor Production System. We use design to solve builder issues like onsite damage with protective covers and mats. We use design to create a financial model to allow us to scale.We are passionate about design, presenting to and coaching other companies on a weekly basis. 

In JAN11 we committed to be a design-led company and appointed a Director of Design.We spent 15mths designing our strategy and a further 2.5yrs designing products, services and support tools while building 4 new manufacturing plants before exhibiting 5 initial product concepts at the Denver AIA Architect show. After feedback and testing we scrapped all 498 sets of tooling and redesigned. We won the UK 'Grand Designs Loves' award and recently a Red Dot Design Award. We have applied for 10 international patents.