After spending quite a deal of design time in China including guest lectures at Colleges and Universities, I still am regularly disappointed when I discover blatant ‘interpretation’ of successful international products.

This image is of a television in my hotel room in Shanghai and probably even more surprising than the unashamed alignment of the brand name [certainly not the tag line…] is the fact that a renowned hotel, famed for its Art Deco design would promote this product to its guests.

In my opinion China can and should and must change its international badge from ‘made in China’ to ‘designed and made in China’ if it wishes to value add to its exports. Then and only then will it really become an accredited member of the international manufacturing community and a powerful one at that! I hope that my company here can in some small way contribute to this transformation.

One another note, having invested time and energy into the design of our products, one is always bemused if they are copied by rival companies [and I am not just talking about China] but what is even more annoying is when the copying is done badly…and all the hard part was done for them!