Aha! moments
Edouard thrive to deliver elegant solutions when designing consumer electronics, boats, home interiors, furniture collections or first product launches for up-and-coming startups.
This approach matters as much at the project management level as it does at the design level. The idea is to deliver the most value out of a project's vision, on schedule and budget.
Lightness
An elegant solution is defined as light and appropriate.
At the design level, it means less parts to deal with. This enables to deliver the project faster with a higher degree of quality.
At the project level, it means optimizing time and resources.
Experienced playing 4D chess games on world's first projects, Mr. Chambellan enjoys proactively identifying upcoming blockers, saving teams and clients expensive work hours. Client's budgets must be spent on what they will feel, smell, hear and see, not on unnecessary meetings, lunches and travel expenses.
An applied metaphor
Comparing a stapler and a paper is for Edouard an efficient way to explain what an elegant solution is.
Both products exist to attach dozens of sheets of paper together, are made of steel, and are mass-manufactured.
As of 2023, the stapler market size is approximately $1B, whereas the paperclip market size is over $11B. Here's why:
The stapler is complex piece of engineering
Even after being improved and automatized for the past century, the stapler manufacturing still requires manual assembly.
The 25 parts require special tooling, sourcing hiccups and a solid quality control. The end-user must purchase a stapler, adequately sized staples, open and load the chamber, engage the spring-loaded mechanism and put good strength to puncture the stack of sheets.
A stapler doesn't forgive: holes are made, papers may be misaligned. Good luck removing one sheet out.
Made out of a single gauge 20 steel wire
The paperclip is produced in three steps:
straightening the spool, folding the wire three times and cutting it. Paperclips are directly packaged, ready for shipment. This streamlined production and packaging process basically prints money.
A paperclip doesn't damage documents and offers flexibility. Customizing the shape or finish is simple and affordable. Most importantly, a paperclip has more than one purpose. End-users can always leverage a paperclip to hit that hard-to-access reset button on a device.