Finding Your Own Voice
Ross Gardam on Building a Design Business That’s Distinctly Yours
When Australian furniture and lighting designer Ross Gardam joined our GCP26 members recently, I expected our conversation to cover plenty of ground.
It did, and more! Ross also offered some incredibly valuable insights into the workings of one of Australia's most successful product businesses.
We talked about product development, commercial viability, systems, customer experience, Milan Design Week, collaborations, AI, business development and what happens when a creative founder begins building a team around them.
But there was one idea Ross returned to throughout the conversation: finding your own voice.
It’s something that sounds deceptively simple. In practice, it can take years to understand, and it continues to evolve as both you and your business change.
When asked for the one piece of advice he would give to our designers, Ross told us:
“It’s important to find your own voice and know how you’re different to everyone else.”
His own business journey is a very good example of what that process can look like.
Starting with Experimentation
Ross returned to Melbourne in 2007 after working in London and started developing products while continuing to undertake interior design work as a consultant. He knew he wanted to build a furniture and lighting business, but readily admits that it took time to work out exactly what that business would become.
The first three years were largely experimental.
Ross created self-initiated products around tightly defined sustainable principles, using a single material or manufacturing process, minimising waste and exploring what could be achieved within those constraints.
They were interesting design exercises, but they weren’t necessarily successful commercial products.
Once price point, packaging, freight, marketing, stability and long-term durability entered the equation, Ross discovered that designing a compelling object was only one part of creating a viable product.
His wonderfully pragmatic (and amusing) assessment?
“I learned a lot about what it takes to make an unsuccessful product.”
There’s an important lesson here for any creative business.
The work needs to be good, of course. But great design alone doesn’t automatically create a great business.
For Ross, those early experiments eventually led to a better understanding of margins, price points, trade pricing and, importantly, designing with an end market in mind.
By 2010, he was releasing products developed from a brief that considered not simply what he wanted to design, but what the market or the Ross Gardam collection actually needed.
Your Voice Extends Beyond the Design
What I found particularly interesting was that Ross doesn’t see brand purely through the lens of aesthetics.
His background working in interior, retail and commercial environments exposed him early to customer experience and the psychology behind how people interact with and purchase products. That thinking has become embedded in the Ross Gardam brand.
Today, the team considers the customer journey in extraordinary detail.
When creating something as seemingly straightforward as a catalogue, they consider how different stakeholders will use the information: the interior designer specifying the product, the client purchasing it, the building owner and ultimately the person interacting with the product.
That thinking continues through the brand’s communication, packaging, authenticity cards and the experience of receiving and using the finished piece.
For designers wanting to elevate their own offer, Ross’s advice wasn’t to simply make everything more expensive, more polished or more luxurious.
It was to first understand what you are actually trying to elevate.
“I think elevating any offering is easy to do if you’ve really nutted out your offering about who you are and what you want to be and why you’re different.”
And even after almost two decades in business, he acknowledges that this remains an ongoing exercise:
“It’s an easy thing to say, it’s a really hard thing to do… it’s something I think about all the time.”
Building Systems Without Building Bureaucracy
As the Ross Gardam business has grown, so too has the need for systems and processes.
Ross described himself as very process-driven, but made an important distinction: systems should make the business simpler, not become another job in themselves.
“I'm really into process, but I’m really cautious of making sure the process doesn’t create process.”
The business resisted moving from spreadsheets to a sophisticated inventory management system until its scale genuinely warranted it. His advice for smaller creative businesses was refreshingly straightforward:
“Yes to systems… But sometimes you can get caught up in the complexity. So keep them simple.”
There was another interesting evolution here too.
Ross still initiates the creative direction of new products, but designers within his team increasingly take ownership of projects from that initial concept through development, photography and launch.
It’s a familiar challenge for any founder-led design business: maintaining the creative DNA of the studio without needing to personally execute every element of the work.
Marketing by Creating an Experience
Ross’s approach to marketing follows much the same philosophy.
Rather than spreading a limited marketing budget across conventional advertising, the business has made significant investments in experiences, particularly Milan Design Week.
Ross explained that New York exhibitions in 2018 and 2019 had a very specific commercial objective: finding US distributors and selling into the American market. Milan serves a broader purpose, connecting the business with both the international design community and Australian designers who converge there.
His approach is remarkably concentrated:
“Instead of spending money in advertising… every two years, the marketing budget’s going to go to an activation in Milan.”
Importantly, Ross has also learned that how the brand appears matters.
Earlier group exhibitions provided exposure, friendships and creative experiences, but didn’t necessarily translate into commercial outcomes. A dedicated branded environment creates a very different response.
As Ross explained, visitors can walk through a group exhibition thinking everything is beautiful and then simply move on. In a branded space, the connection becomes clearer:
“You see it as a singular brand, things that I can buy, and straight away your mind’s like, ‘Oh, I can specify this.’”
Again, it comes back to clarity of identity.
The business should still work for you
Towards the end of our conversation, Ross took the idea of finding your voice somewhere even more interesting.
It isn’t only about what your work looks like or how your brand presents itself.
It’s also about deciding what relationship you want to have with your business.
Ross spoke about thinking five or ten years ahead, considering work-life balance and questioning how much of your identity you want intertwined with the business you have created.
For creative founders, that can be particularly difficult. Our businesses are rarely completely separate from us. Our taste, experiences, relationships, values and personalities inevitably find their way into the work.
But Ross sees that as an advantage rather than something to eliminate.
Our aesthetic and creative output evolves because we evolve. Our experiences change. The world around us changes. The important thing is to keep checking in with where we are, what we want and where we’re heading.
And perhaps the most pertinent comment of the entire conversation was this:
“You’ll find the most success in your path and the most happiness, because people are interested in you.”
Not simply an aesthetic. Not the latest design trend. Not a version of somebody else’s successful business.
You.
And perhaps that’s the real challenge for any creative business: to become clearer and more confident about what is genuinely yours and then build the products, experience, systems, marketing and business around it.
A huge thank you to Ross Gardam for sharing his experience so openly and generously with our GCP26 members.
To find out more about how our Coaching Programs can upscale your business systems, book a free 20 minute Discovery Call, or email us at hello@thedesigncoach.com.au.
Cheers,
Andrew
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