1 Dear Ray

2 I’m writing about the attachment you sent with

3 The two designs. I really like the first one
4 which is made of wood. It looks very
5 stylish but not very functional. The second
6 might be better because it’s easy to use but
7 it isn’t very innovative. How about combining
8 the appearance of the first and the practicality of
9 the second? Please send me your new
10 design by Thursday

My name is Freyja Sewell and I am a product and furniture designer working in London.

A good design is one that balances form, function and beauty, um, one that is fit for
purpose and doesn’t have unnecessary features. For example, the Plumen's bulb is a
wonderful product which is an electric light bulb, so it’s sustainable and more energy-
efficient, but instead of just being boring, they’ve used the actual features to make a
beautiful innovative product.

One of my design heroes is certainly Thomas Heatherwick. He is an incredible, um,

designer when it comes to balancing engineering and technical knowledge with really
beautiful and exciting new ideas. Another thing that inspires me as a designer is Japanese
culture – not just the way things look and appear on the surface, but their philosophy, the
way they approach objects that surround them.

The hush pod chair, um, is a design that I came up with several years ago. Er, I developed
it in Tokyo when I was surrounded by the chaos of the city and I was thinking about how I
could create a private space within a public environment. So it’s a seating chair that you
can either close off so you’re completely alone or open out to share the space around you.

Hush is made from wool felt. I had in mind a form and I did a lot of different models with
different materials, and wool felt was the material that gave me the soft giving structure
that I had in mind. Er, wool is an incredible material, one that I am now, because of this
project, very much in love with. It’s sustainable, renewable, it’s breathable, it has incredible
insulating properties and it’s British and has a fantastic heritage associated with it.

The London Design Museum project was in response to the brief of Thrift, and I took that
to mean a really careful use of materials. So the material that I selected was a by-product
of the wool carpet industry, er, loose wool fibres, so I was able to use my favourite
material, but there was a very thrifty option.

I had these fibres which are produced as a by-product of the British carpet industry, and I
didn’t really know what I was going to do with them at the start, so I combined them with a
lot of different materials, um, different sort of chemicals, trying to see what could be
achieved, er, I was looking at soft materials and rigid materials.

Ah, one of the materials I ended up choosing was starch because it’s also a natural
resource, and I use a sandwich toaster to apply heat and pressure, so I could quickly
produce a lot of different test pieces. One of the best test pieces was the, er, a lot of starch
combined with the wool in the sandwich toaster and I produced a rigid hard material that I
found very exciting and I wanted to continue to explore it.

So now I had this test piece which was the starch mixed with the wool, and I had a rigid
material which I was calling starch-bound wool or SBW. And I took the material and made
furniture from it because it seemed an exciting thing to do to take wool, which is often,
well, it’s always soft and giving, and make something unexpected like a hard rigid piece of
furniture from it.
So the table and the chair are really only intended as a showcase of the new material
which I’ve invented.

I’m really hoping that someone sees the starch-bound wool and is as excited about its
potential as a new sustainable material as I am. I think that it would be great to replace
things which are currently treated as disposable, for example, a little plastic stool, um, and
make it out of a material that when it’s thrown away it will actually biodegrade rather than
just clogging up landfill for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Nepotism
Once, when I was a sales manager for a well-known publisher, I was managing a very nice
young man called Steve. Unfortunately, Steve’s father was the company director. Do you
know anyone who only got their job because he or she is well-connected? Perhaps she
used to go to school with the daughter of a senior manager, or is best friends with the
sales director’s wife? This is called ‘nepotism’ – or giving jobs to people you already know.
Of course, these people might be extremely talented and well-qualified. But usually, it is
clear that such people only got their position through good contacts. This can often lead to
trouble. After all, I found it very difficult to manage someone whose father was actually my
boss.

Industrial espionage
Some people say that business is like war. In my experience, businesses are always
fighting each other, trying to be the winner. One way to win this fight is to find out what the
other company is doing. I often went to conferences to try and find out what our
competitors were doing. During these events, I was running around all day, pretending that
I wasn’t a sales manager at all, hoping to discover what our enemy’s latest big book would
be. Of course, industrial espionage can be much more extreme. Stealing laptops or
hacking into your competitor’s files are both ways to try and gain an advantage. That’s why
most companies these days have very good security systems to stop their valuable
information getting out.

Discrimination
Companies often need to hire new people, and have to make difficult decisions about who
to select. But are job interviews always fair? About ten years ago, I was interviewing
people for the position of assistant manager. I had to interview a young university graduate
with very little work experience and a 59 year-old with a huge amount of experience. Of
course, I knew that the older person might leave the company in a few years, even though
he would probably do a very good job and would need very little training. However, the
younger candidate might stay in the company for a much longer time. Who do you think I
hired?

 Derek worked constantly, and very rarely took time off at the weekends. Even on
family holidays, he would take several suitcases full of documents to read. There
was rarely a time when he didn't think about his job. Most people thought he was
a workaholic.
someone who finds it difficult to stop working very bad at managing his time

 2
The coffee company was very successful in the UK and the US, and profits were
extremely high. However, the the director wanted to stop concentrating on these
countries and expand into the Asian market.
a place where you can buy food a part of the world where something is sold

 3
Since the economic problems of last year, the company's fortunes have not looked
good. In fact, staff numbers have been reduced by 10% in an attempt to save
money.
the luck that a person or a company has a large amount of money

 4
She founded the company in 1967. Since then, the company has grown to be one
of the most successful businesses in the fashion industry. Now, her daughter has
taken over as director.
discovered started a business

 5
The Sony Walkman was one of the best-selling brands in the 1980s. These
cassette players, which you could carry everywhere, were very fashionable and
offered people the chance to listen to music outside of the home. Of course now
 that most music is experienced through digital technology, many teenagers today
have no idea what a 'cassette' is.
the name of a well-known company product something which is completely

new

I am Teresa Le. I was born in Vietnam, grew up in Australia, in Sydney, now I run my own
business, my own restaurant in London.

I wanted to start my own business because I’ve always wanted to do something for myself.
And in my last job, I got made redundant, just before the financial crisis. Um, during that
time, it was actually quite difficult to look for another project, so instead of finding myself
another new project to work on, I created my own project.

I started the business because I’ve always enjoyed cooking, em, and having friends over,
and a lot of my friends feel the same, so I thought, you know, why don’t I just start a
business doing, teaching people how to cook?

I started the business because for me at the time there wasn’t many good Vietnamese
restaurants in London, and I quite enjoy making, you know, nice authentic Vietnamese
food. So the idea came about, you know, ‘Why don’t I just go about and teach people how
to make good Vietnamese food at home, in their own kitchen?’ Um, I got a few friends
together. We started with the idea, just cooking at home. And they really enjoyed the
whole experience, using their own equipment, in their own kitchens, and then after we
finished that, a few days later they actually recreated the whole thing in their own kitchen.
It’s cheap for them; it’s also very affordable for me to start the business as well.

The business is Ládudu. La in Vietnamese means ‘leaf’ and Dudu means ‘papaya’ so
together it’s ‘Papaya Leaf’. I originally wanted the business to have some meaning for me,
something to do with the business itself, which is relating to food.

Eh, the business actually developed from home cooking lessons into a restaurant. Some
of my friends actually came to my cooking lessons and they really enjoyed the whole
experience and ideas. They invested some of their own money to help me open the
restaurant and so the business actually turned into more from a one person into a
company with shareholders. Running a restaurant is actually very different to running a
mobile home cooking business, in the sense that it’s much bigger, it’s a lot more
demanding, eh, coming from managing just myself and my time, I now have to manage
over twenty staff.

When we first opened the restaurant, I worked as a head chef in the kitchen for over six
months. So the whole menu was actually designed around what I like and what I think that
people would appreciate. Em, the restaurant has been running for a year and a half now
and I actually have a head chef coming on board, but all the original idea, all the menu is
still mine.

I’d like to develop the business further, by creating a few more restaurants, turning it into a
chain, creating, developing new products, so Ládudu ... I want to see as a brand name and
something that I can grow and expand.

Um, in terms of business icons, in this particular field that I am currently in, I do quite like
Jamie Oliver. I admire him for his passion. To me, he’s more than a chef. He’s clearly
shown he loves what he’s doing, he likes the food and he’s also a real businessman as
well. He’s published quite a few books. I’ve actually been working on a cook book idea
myself, so, hopefully, one day I can get that published, too.

‘I didn’t like working with my first film company which was the reason I moved. Then I met
my first husband and it was a very romantic time. When he died I was devastated. I
thought to myself, ‘I can’t work again.’ So I sold our house and have been living on my
boat in the Mediterranean ever since. I haven’t been a recluse but I didn’t want to meet
journalists. Then one day this film script was sent to me. I loved the script and so I’ve
decided to start work again.’