In this insightful interview New Zealand based designer Greg Holdsworth of Return To Sender touches on, designers utilising local materials and manufacturing, sustainability, the environmental issues surrounding coffins, how plastic is perceived and much more.
1. Greg, Welcome to Design Droplets. Thank you for taking the time to chat, could you please give a quick introduction on yourself.
I can’t remember the birth of my environmental consciousness, but it was long before it became part of popular culture. It may have been seeing the sheer volume of waste heading into the local tip – we are all insulated from this now as our waste magically goes ‘away’. At least having a local tip kept people in touch with the end of product life cycles. Whatever the reasons, I have tried to bring this consciousness into everything I have been connected with over the years. My opportunity to make a significant difference came shortly after selling an Auckland based publishing business. I embarked on my product design career with a degree from UNITEC in Auckland. Upon completion of the degree I was faced with an opportunity so I took a risk. People liked my final year major project – but could I make a business from it?
2. You are the designer and founder of Return To Sender eco-caskets, can you talk about where Return To Sender came from and what inspired it?
The seed was sewn many years ago. My wife and I had had embarked on a big overseas experience and had a phone call in Paris one week in to the trip – her father had died. By the time we flew home his body had been returned to the family home. We spent some time standing around the coffin and couldn’t help noticing that the metal handles weren’t cold – further inspection revealed they were actually metal coated plastic. Having discovered this it was obvious the wood grain was artificial as well, not to mention the lining fabrics. From an ecological point of view this all seemed very sad, but the worst part was the mis-match of values between the man and the box he was lying in. My father-in-law was passionate about wood, spending weekends working on old sailing boats. He would have been horrified.
Artisan in St Mathews cathedral. Photo: Charles Howells
3. Return To Sender started off as a project in your final year of product design at UNITEC, can you share with us how you made the transition from university project to commercial entity?
There was a lot of positive feedback with the project and I had a friend who had just started a funeral directing business. I made a few caskets for her and then started talking to other funeral directors. This worked well as I had a ‘friendly’ first client who didn’t get upset as we worked through a few practical refinements. The next step to commercial entity was extending the range. There were only a few funeral directors forward thinking enough to use the Artisan – we figured the best way to get alongside the more conservative firms would be to offer some less radical designs, and then gently introduce them to something more edgy.
4. What has been the biggest hurdle you have faced in commercialising Return To Sender?
I like being the designer but in a small business you also need to be everyone else…. CEO, sales person, accountant etc. I don’t like being the sales guy, so the hurdle has been forcing myself to do it (without being side-tracked on an interesting design issue). The good news is that this doesn’t last forever. Most of my sales are repeat orders and the best new business comes from clients who discover us (rather than being ‘sold’ to). This sounds simple but I think its a significant insight, it happened in our publishing business also.
For Metro magazine. Photo: Charles Howells
5. Your coffins are designed and manufactured in New Zealand and they produced using New Zealand timbers. In your opinion how important is it for designers to utilise local materials and manufacturing?
If you look at freight, many calculations point to things like supermarket goods having the biggest impact on the drive home from the shop – far greater than shipping from abroad. The same applies to plywood, which is very efficient to ship. This gives me some flexibility, which is just as well as NZ made plywood only comes in two flavours, treated or untreated (pine). Some of this ply is manufactured in China anyway from New Zealand logs. Solid wood is a different matter. So far I can source all I need locally. In terms of manufacture I am very uncomfortable outsourcing overseas. If everyone did this we would loose our capability to do anything useful…. could we really live sustainably if we were all accountants, lawyers and politicians?
6. With the proliferation of plastics and technologies like injection moulding traditional craftsmanship is something that has been lost in many areas of product design. Do designers have a role to play in reinvigorating appreciation and use of local craftsman and their skills?
Firstly, I would say there is nothing wrong with plastic – in fact its a fantastic material. What is unfortunate is the perception that its there to be thrown away. If we appreciated plastics and used the material for quality goods that lasted we could stop depleting a precious resource and reduce toxic waste streams. To answer your question – definitely. Products can convey meaning, there is an area between product and craft where craftsman qualities can reach a wider audience and product can be re-introduced to art. I like stripped down simplicity but a renaissance of decorative objects would be food for culture.
7. Should sustainability be a central tenant of the design profession or something that can be considered as an add on to the design and development process?
If sustainability is not the central tenant of the design profession our grandchildren will have nowhere to live.
Artisan in the park. Photo: Greg Holdsworth
8. Can you tell us about the environmental impacts of ‘normal’ coffins versus Return To Sender eco-coffins?
Normal is different in each country. In New Zealand coffins are like cheap office furniture – MDF, fake woodgrain and plastic handles / liners. This contributes to claims of 45 pollutants being released at some crematoriums, including dioxins from PVC woodgrain. MDF is tough in terms of impact resistance but it has little strength (think sagging bookshelves). This means you need a large mass to make something strong. Some Return To Sender coffins are a fraction of the mass of MDF units and have attractive wodgrain already – no need to conceal it with fake woodgrain. We integrate wooden handles in most cases so there are no extra parts and there is no opportunity for funeral directors to add metal coated plastic handles. The story changes if you look at the United States. They mainly use metal caskets, consuming over 100,000 tonnes of steel, 3,000 tonnes of copper and bronze, and over one and a half million tonnes of reinforced concrete for vaults each year. If we can replace this with minimal quantities of bio-degradable renewable resources the impact would be very significant.
9. What are your thoughts on the current state of New Zealand design?
Pockets of excellence would be a good description. It surprises me how we find out (sometimes by accident) about great work that has been going on for years in a back room somewhere. In some ways it would be nice to have more cohesion and showcase things more but its probably just a reflection of scale. Events like the Melbourne Design Festival are great but New Zealand probably just doesn’t have critical mass for that sort of thing yet.
Holdsworth Design Christmas Tree 2009. Photo: Greg Holdsworth
10. Greg, thanks for taking the time to talk with us here at Design Droplets. Do you have any final thoughts or advice for Design Droplets readers?
Just ‘keep up the good work’ and thanks for inviting me. My main piece of advice for anyone wanting to build their own business is summed up in one word – ‘tenacity’. Bigger picture (life and business) can be summed up in ‘Wabi Sabi’.
