The first time the reporter came into contact with Teacher Zhang was during my graduate studies

 when a roommate from the School of Art and Design shared with me the work of a teacher from the school. 

At that time, I was attracted by the minimalist design style, and later I learned from my roommate that this teacher was Zhang Fei,

 a teacher majoring in industrial design at the School of Science and Art Design, Zhejiang University of Technology.

In the teacher profile of the school, we see that he was named the "Hangzhou Industrial Design Elite of the Year" for the year 2013;

Invited to participate in Shanghai (International) Fashion Home Exhibition, Frankfurt International Spring Consumer Goods Exhibition, 

Tokyo Fashion Home Exhibition, China International Designer Works Exhibition and Trade Fair, 

and Taiwan International Cultural and Creative Industry Expo (Taipei). The work won the second prize in the Ningbo Innovation Invention Design Competition, 

and the work "Nest Egg" won the International If Product Design Award 2014 (IF Product Design Award). In addition to his teaching status and these honors, 

Zhang Fei also defines himself as an industrial design enthusiast and a pure designer.

Bela design is a spiritual escape

Recalling the initial entrepreneurial opportunity, Zhang Fei said it began with a designer's spiritual "escape". 

Actually, 'Bela Design' was established as early as 2004, but at that time it was just a design team, not a brand At that time, 

Zhang Fei had just graduated and stayed at a university in Ningbo to teach. In his spare time, he helped some foreign trade enterprises design products. 

And most of these customers are "wealthy and willful" nouveau riche, who not only have limited aesthetic standards, 

but sometimes also lower the quality and practicality of products to save costs.

Over the course of seven to eight years, more than 70 of Zhang Fei's design products have been put into the market. 

For a young product designer, this is a recognition of their professional competence, but for them, behind the high salary is the loss of their ideals.

Many of the products produced during that period went against my original design intentions, 

but ultimately it was because at that time, my heart had not yet achieved freedom

Zhang Fei, who couldn't cross the line in his heart, often went to the Amazon website to search for products he designed

and searched for feedback from foreign buyers. In his opinion, not being able to understand the usage of a product is the biggest tragedy for designers.

Good design must be creative and practical. "With a background in industrial design, he places great emphasis on the relationship between products and people.

Therefore, when ideals are on the road but hands and feet are bound, Zhang Fei's design path becomes increasingly lonely. 

Many times he thought about "escaping", but ultimately couldn't find a sustainable way of survival until he became acquainted with e-commerce.

Before the Spring Festival in 2009, Zhang Fei used his free time to design a desk lamp and gave it as a New Year gift to his family and friends. 

This desk lamp is mainly made of natural wood, simple and atmospheric, which makes friends scream uncontrollably and take photos to share on Weibo. 

The design, which was originally just out of interest, received much more response online than he expected, and many netizens expressed their liking and desire to purchase it.

The unexpected popularity of the desk lamp led Zhang Fei to find the direction of "escape" - opening a Taobao store. 

I am not very familiar with e-commerce and I am not good at operating Taobao stores, "Zhang Fei admitted. 

The first few transactions of the store were completed in a busy and hectic manner. The product has started selling, 

and subsequent packaging, transportation, and other issues have been resolved one by one. Initially, the vast majority of the store's traffic came 

from social media platforms such as Weibo and Douban.

After the successful trial of the desk lamp, Zhang Fei began to try to enrich his product line and explore the market-oriented path 

of original home products. As he continued to grow, he gained more confidence and ideas.

The design concept is his' ID card '

When it comes to the brand name "Original Design", Zhang Fei feels a little regretful because the name was decided on a whim at the time. 

He is not very good at expressing himself. Sometimes when he has a lot to say, he suddenly doesn't know how to say it. 

If given a few more days, he may not be able to come up with a name with complex and loud meanings, 

so he decides immediately based on his feelings. Original design "- respecting the original appearance of things, being able to convey these is enough.

The natural appearance is something that Zhang Fei particularly likes, so he prefers wooden products. 

He believes that before wood became a material, it had life, and when it became one of the elements of a product as a material, 

it did not die, but was given new life by design. The combination of the two is dynamic, so his works have an extremely unified design language: 

wood, unique wood grain that cannot capture patterns, shape that respects the origin, and some thoughtful and humanized detail processing.

Design is the core of a product, and designers are the creators of its soul. Zhang Fei is not only good at combining technology 

when designing products, but also incorporates his own emotions and thoughts. So he strongly opposes simulating product renderings on the computer for a long time, 

and prefers to use real materials to make one-on-one samples.

Inspiration does not come from a single blueprint, but rather from continuous prototyping, 

comparison, and selection. Zhang Fei believes that the design process is an interactive process with clients, 

where he tries and simulates many usage scenarios, constantly polishing and changing them. This is also his most fascinating process. 

Just like the first series of desk lamps, he used the simplest lines to showcase "elegance" and "gentleness", hence he named them "Man" and "Woman",

Brother "and" Sister ". In his design philosophy, products also have gender and warmth.

Every product of "Bela Design" has an "ID card", which is Zhang Fei's design concept.

For example, the popular online product "Ba Yin Box" was designed based on his accidental experience.

Once, when Zhang Fei was extremely restless at work, he forced himself to quiet down. In his absent-minded moment, 

he accidentally played with the music box on the table, but he found an unprecedented calmness. 

The clean sounds came one after another, like raindrops hitting his palm in summer, calm and comfortable. Inspiration followed, 

and he immediately drew the patterns that flashed through his mind and made some samples using natural wood. 

The shapes were not exaggerated, and he wanted to present the natural feeling of a wooden block lying there. 

He tried various size schemes to ensure high aesthetic appeal, and the final product was generally liked by adults more than children.

The reason why his music box works give people a calm and unpretentious feeling may also be related to the selected songs. 

Zhang Fei listened to nearly a hundred songs and ultimately chose several old songs such as

 "The Moon Represents My Heart", "Cheers to the Past", "City in the Sky" due to his nostalgia. 

He couldn't quite understand the new popular songs anymore and was making a lot of noise, possibly due to a compulsive mentality. 

Zhang Fei felt that when choosing a song, he had to first not make himself uncomfortable, because in his previous design career,

He had extremely difficult days

The Hardship of Domestic Designers: Marketing Beyond Innovation

When ideals meet reality, various problems arise as scheduled.

Original designers encounter many problems in the market. The supply point of 'original design' is the design chain. At present, 

in addition to Taobao distribution and Tmall flagship stores, 

the "bela design" sales channels also include offline experience centers and sales channels spread throughout Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other places.

The most difficult thing now is to stock up, "Zhang Fei told reporters. At first, the" original design "was to find a processing factory for outsourcing processing. 

Due to the difficulty in controlling quality and low efficiency, he had to build a factory with an area of about 400 square meters and hire several experienced carpenters. 

Even so, it is only barely achieving production capacity. During the period after Singles' Day and Singles' Day, the original design was severely out of stock. 

Therefore, in terms of supply chain, we still have a lot to improve, "Zhang Fei said.

Wood, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of slow work to produce fine work. From cutting wood to applying glue, bonding and other processes, 

workers need to be extremely careful and focused. However, it is difficult to find experienced and meticulous carpenters, 

as there are not enough workers to expand the production line in a short period of time.

Often, due to a large order, there is a shortage of stock in other channels, "said Zhang Fei. Since the originally designed product became popular on the internet, 

he has been invited to attend exhibitions in Frankfurt and other places. Through the exposure of the exhibition,

the product has gained a certain level of popularity in the industry and received many large orders from around the world. 

Meanwhile, with the continuous expansion of online word-of-mouth effects, there are significant conflicts between online and offline prices and sources of goods.

Faced with such a difficult problem, Zhang Fei, who is not good at marketing, sighed: "I really envy foreign designers who don't have to worry about the market and sales, 

as long as they focus on design." For a long time, the team of "Bela Design" has not had a real salesperson or operation team. In the new year, 

Zhang Fei has new considerations for products, marketing, and the market. When everything is mature, I hope to open an experience store. 

He knows that a true original designer should not only constantly innovate, but also focus on "cross-border" beyond design.

Now that there are more and more team members, I asked him when he plans to switch roles and let the apprentices do more design 

and become qualified brand managers on their own. He thought for a moment and said that it would be best if management talents could

come out of the team. He hoped that he would only be an innovative craftsman until retirement. For Zhang Fei, designing products is about living, it's about living.