The Architectural evolution of Glasgow buildings at Timorous Beasties

We discuss the architectural evolution of Glasgow with founders of Timorous Beasties.

Transcript

00:00You can't build a design brand that you have from somewhere like this without people really following that journey.

00:08I just wonder about those relationships you have with customers that have been there for a long time with you

00:14and how important that is to sustain something like this.

00:17There's a certain part of our company which is we're not for everybody.

00:24Yes, we've got really good followers, of course, or people who buy from us.

00:29And there's as many people out there that we're not for them.

00:34And that's what's good about us.

00:36So we're not this middle-of-the-road, tepid, yeah, it's fine, or whatever.

00:41You either love us or you hate us.

00:42If you love us, great, great support.

00:44And that's a good thing.

00:45And it's very good for our brand that we can be a little bit polarising, I suppose.

00:51We have proven that we can be successful.

00:55We have designs that sell all the time.

00:58We've got designs that are less financially successful, but they're successful in different ways.

01:02It depends how you want to measure it.

01:04Glasgow has been living and working and marking us as from Glasgow.

01:09Glasgow and Scotland has been a great support to us.

01:12We couldn't have done it anywhere.

01:13We would have been out of business, I think, if we'd gone anywhere else.

01:17And it continues to support what we're doing.

01:20Yes, of course, we've got markets in America and elsewhere in the world, which is going well.

01:28I think we've probably always just stuck to our guns.

01:32And I think sitting here in the print room is the product of what we do.

01:40And I think what that is, is to have our own independence

01:44and be able to produce whatever the hell we want

01:48and never to condescend or second-guess what our customer wants

01:52and to keep things interesting

01:55and always be a company that's design-led rather than market-driven.

02:05Keeping ourselves and everyone else maybe a little bit on their toes

02:09and coming up with new ideas.

02:11A lot of things have changed over the years as well.

02:13We still do hand-print, but we've had all the technologies that have come along

02:19like digital technologies and World Wide Web

02:23and all those kind of things have happened as we've been working and growing.