scarlet’s sarah gaventa and claire catterall  say it has been missing in the past, when everybody  knows that it is a copy of the famous designboom marts.

it happened already to our friends from designersblock, that  organizations repeated the success of their exhibition concept  without involving them directly nor crediting the ‘original’ to designblock. it happened during this london design week to designboom that apparently respected institutions (the british organizations design council, arts council and crafts council)  and an new agency of UK design marketers without any own ideas (scarlet project) organized the designboom mart under a different name and as something ‘truely original’ – the ‘curated super design market’ . it was held at the truman brewery and every single aspect  was based on the designboom mart initiatives that we started in 2005 and brought to the ICFF in new york and to the tokyo design week. the super design market is based exactly on the same things – products from 30 designers  – chosen by a panel of curators  – a mix of established names as well as recent graduates.  – items were on sale for between £5 – £50, with some very special  products selling for around £100.  – most products were limited edition batch productions – offer designers the chance to ‘test’ a product make a bit of money fo themselves.

does it makes sense that people always just grab other peoples ideas and make them their own?  why is there no respect, and never placing credit is everybody’s policy? why is there no collaboration between them? it’s because at the end, these people are not interested in the cultural aspects of the initiatives, it’s tough business! BTW, how much money did scarlet design earned from this idea?

more info please see  – the tokyo mart 2005 https://www.designboom.com/martokyo2.html – the new york ICFF mart 2006 https://www.designboom.com/snapshots/mart06/martpics.html – and the ICFF mart 2005 https://www.designboom.com/mart.html – and a few comments from the participants  https://www.designboom.com/martcom2005.html