2014 has been a very significant year for Inkmason, marked by several firsts. We have discovered our first PR industry client – Youngs; with Dacheng, we simultaneously executed our first public space and retail design, obtained our first client in Shanghai and our first client in real estate industry; with Nestlé R&D Dongguan we carried out our first design and build project in Guangdong area which is also the first Candy Research and Development Center in China.
In this past year, our company has seen developments in many areas, evolving quite steadily and positively: adding four new team members, which substantially increases our working capacity; setting up our marketing team to provide better communication support; increasing new client referrals with exposure in different media and geographical locations; setting up new collaboration with building service consultants and curtain wall engineers, all of which has resulted in a more well rounded “lean team” composition, providing comprehensive design solutions.
Besides our positive developments, we have also encountered some setbacks. When recruiting new members, we encountered difficulties in finding talents to serve our targeted high-end multinational clients. The increase in team size has also demonstrated some challenges such as adjusting the members to our new young culture and the new established system, transferring the know-hows yet maintaining a high level of innovation. These have affected our team performance and reflected in the redundancy of resource spent in each project.
Between our strengths and weaknesses, 2014 has also been a year of self-discovery for Inkmason. While in 2013 we found ourselves in the state of survival, struggling with projects that are too big for our team, we’ve come to discover our competences and market niches in 2014. We have proactively searched for new grounds in the market, such as the PKU Coffee Corner where we found our link age to academic retail projects, and Dacheng for our potential Shanghai Market.
As designers, we should look for excellence, not just customer satisfaction. Through 2014 Inkmason is more recognized by the community as a brand of creativity, result-driven and insistence on understanding our clients. Yet there are much more for us to learn, for example, refining our internal systems to ensure consistency, as well as upgrading our design knowledge base.
All in all, we could summarize in one word: Strive. We have strived in 2014 as a company, as ONE team, and as members individually.
As the New Year is at our doorstep, we have also identified our 2015 targets. We shall solidify our competencies and achievements, build comprehensiveness, and lay foundations to support business expansion. This will be a year for us to solidify our foundation upon which we soar.
