Sompit Moi Fusakul

Topic: Another Life: company rejuvenation

Abstract
This is a case study of how design students and lecturer work together with a fatigued and obsolete company in looking for new directions to restore and save the company from completely going out of business. The case took place between June and October 2007, with some collaboration projects still being run to commercial realization.

Siam Transfertex, which belonged to Kiatichai family, was first founded in 1985 as a small OEM, engaging in supplying hard chrome intaglio cylinders for other rotogravure 1 printing manufactures. Six years later, it successfully developed itself into a rotogravure manufacture, printing hundreds of designs on garments, with contracts from bigger clients in sporting companies such as Adidas and FBT (Football Thailand). The company had constantly received large orders from Thai, regional and African apparel and garment companies, but a few years later, these orders were decreasing rapidly. For years, the business has been facing difficulties due to economic declines and global competitiveness. A large number of clients have shifted to accept cheaper services from Vietnam, India and China, leaving the company only a small amount of domestic orders from low cost apparel companies.

Believing that design thinking can help rejuvenating the fatigued and obsolete companies, Sompit Moi Fusakul has set up a program called "Second Life: company rejuvenation 2" aiming at being a research ground on how design can improve or positively change the face of businesses. The program was searching for several suitable candidates and subsequently came into contact with Mr Kiatichai who curiously volunteered his parents' company, Siam Transfertex, as a pilot study ground and offered to assist on commenting and evaluating the program.

1 Rotogravure is a printing process in which images are etched photomechanically onto copper cylinders mounted in a rotary press, from which they are printed onto a moving web of paper, typically running at high speed and used for long print runs of magazine, stamps, newspaper and garments.

2 The project initially called "Second Life: company rejuvenation" intended to express a state or process in which a fatigued or obsolete company being given new alternatives or options in reviving or bring the business back to life or its full strength. However, due to being the identical name with the "Second Life", a largely well-known virtual world on internet, Dr Fusakul reluctantly changed the name of project to "Another Life: company rejuvenation" to avoid possible confusion.