Design and the workplace

BP Ergo hopes to transform the ho-hum Indian workplace into an exciting space you'll have to be dragged away from.

Modular office furniture was never the most stimulating of manufacturing industries. BP Ergo, the 150-crore subsidiary of the DG Piramal group, wants to change that.

From an uncertain entry into a crude market in the early 90s to exponential growth in the dotcom years, BP Ergo is trying to sidestep the competition from established domestics and proliferating imports by offering thought-provoking, exciting choices.

"When we started operations in 1992, most people confused modular furniture with cheap plastic. Today, there is recognition that design and product can impact performance; it is a Rs 1,000 crore industry growing at 30 per cent annually," says Aparna Piramal, executive director, BP Ergo.

"However," she adds, "we are waiting for people to get integrated with the thought-leadership part of the business as opposed to saying, 'I just need to cram 100 people into 10,000 sq ft'. I am yet to see vision at senior levels about the kind of culture an office space should project."

The problem is that modular furniture is still too much of a commodity for consumers to demonstrate brand preference. "All things equal, price accounts for 80 per cent of the decision. It is rare that someone will say I will only use a particular brand," says J K Chabra, vice president sales and marketing, Shapoorji Pallonji Constructions.

BP Ergo is 15-20 per cent more expensive than other local offerings but Piramal is unruffled. "It's an unusual case for a market leader to be the most expensive, but our price value proposition has always been that we offer internationally recognised design quality at Indian prices."

Their prices are higher, their delivery times matched by other players, and ergonomics is everyone's buzzword. So how will they stand out in the crowd?

Piramal states, "At the crux of our success is that we want to be forerunners in picking up themes of change in workplace behaviour." Their pleasure at work philiosophy stems from the research carried out by Francis Duffy, a leading practitioner in the field of office design, who believes the greatest needs of today's offices are group activity, mobility and open-ended teamwork.

That explains the launch of Totem, designed by Chris Sykes of Element, a partner alliance design company. Totem works best for open-plan, collaborative workspaces, but its key is its flexibility to give you autonomy when you need it.

There are desks that are docked onto the partition system or can be wheeled out and joined up to make a conference table, height adjustable work tables (as Piramal says, "Indians are anywhere between 5 ft and 6.5 ft") and wheelie storage units. The other unusual aspect is the radial, free-flowing shapes.

"The conventional 90 degrees has become boring," says Piramal. She adds, "We're not trying to replace offices as we know it, these are tools you fit to specific needs and integrate into your office."

BP Ergo is also hoping a renewed emphasis on research and product development will set them apart. Working with Latika Khosla, a reputed colour consultant, they carried out a research study and published a book that linked corporate cultures with colours, materials and finishes.

"It's about linking abstract notional concepts of wanting your office to tell a story, to concrete design elements. We are the only furniture company to have developed a proprietary palette of more than 70 colours and finishes."

Says Khosla, "We call it efficient aesthetics, and it goes far beyond the arbitrary use of logo colours as office colours or making assumptions like 'we have young employees so let's give them bright work stations'.

BP Ergo was a pioneer of the realisation that in the chain of hurried events that lead up to installation, everybody overlooks final surface articulation."

The company's focus on innovative marketing and design activity, along with a brand new corporate identity that came with changing its name from Blow Plast Ergonomics to BP Ergo last year, has allowed it to make the leap from a predictable furniture manufacturer to a fairly cool brand.

Their brochures are interactive, their product launches fun, their communication with both consumer and trade solid, and even their brand screensaver with its jumpy mutating logo has been doing the rounds.

In a segment where differentiation is hard to spot, perhaps only a brand that will jump out at consumers will get noticed.