Home Sweet Home For Specialist Designers in Warwick

Astheimer was established in 2009 by founder and creative director Carsten Astheimer from a converted garage at his family home in Claverdon, near Warwick.
The specialist design consultancy focuses on the automotive, marine, furniture, high-tech products and consumer electronics sectors and their clients include high-profile businesses such as Ferrari, Caterpillar, 3M and Unilever.
 

The Plan
Carsten wanted to bring his team together under one roof instead of everyone working from home. The search started for suitable business premises but Carsten and business administration director Federica Corrado became frustrated at finding the right site. That changed when Federica met Jaymie Thakordas, a Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub account manager, at a networking event. She suggested St George’s Business Park in Lower Cape, Warwick, and helped with filling in the forms to apply for a £20,000 grant from Coventry City Council to assist with the move.
 

The Results 
Astheimer has moved into a light, airy 200sqm studio with a meeting room and 200sqm workshop which means for the first time, the company can develop ideas and final prototypes in-house.

The business has also expanded its workforce with designer Sina Rahmani and design engineer Alex Stewart increasing its staff numbers to eight. Intern Jong Ba will be joining in April 2016 along with a designer and marketing executive in the summer.

Moving to Lower Cape also means three new companies are to be established – British Design Shop for online furniture, Salt Furniture aimed at the high-end marine and residential markets and Marine Futures which will sell boats with zero emissions.

Carsten said: “The size of the unit is perfect for us because it gives us the flexibility I would like to maintain.

“We benchmark ourselves against the best design studios and in-house design studios around the world because of the quality of our work from research to creativity since we are continually pushing boundaries to look for innovation in materials and technology.

“The combination of our ideas and the quality of our work means that everything that comes out of our studio is world-class.

“By investing in the best possible people, this quality has enabled us to retain all our clients throughout our time in business.

“We have a multi-discipline, multicultural team where everyone contributes something different to every project we do and we work in a multitude of sectors, we which gives us a fresh approach cross pollinating ideas, materials and technologies from one sector to another.

“We are able to cross-pollinate ideas which can apply to either the marine or automotive industry and using this technology from different sectors is what sets us apart.”

He added: “Receiving the grant gave us a great incentive to make the move. Having the right advice is key which Jaymie gave us because having that leverage in the funding meant we pressed ahead with the deal and meant we had extra financial resources to appoint two new members of staff.”

Jaymie said it can be daunting deciding to move from working from home to buying or renting business premises. “Astheimer is a fantastic business which has an impressive array of clients in various sectors and this move to St George’s Business Park means they have been able to expand their services from concept development to final prototyping as well as increase their staff numbers,” she said. “The Growth Hub is here to help entrepreneurs find a unit which is perfect for their business as well as give guidance on funding opportunities. “I have no doubt Astheimer will continue to flourish in an exciting industry because of their innovative approach.”