The Pagnol story-Chapter 2, SMD and the right direction
Before I proceed with the Pagnol story, it is worth mentioning a case study of my design and marketing studio Speed Machines Design, the one in Moto freaking GP! the top of our industry as far as racing is concerned. The main question I get is "how did you get that project"??
So here are the answers that has trickled down from SMD to Pagnol to everything else I do in life including how I am raising my kids!
#1 Know if you have the talent.
#2 Nurture that talent, prepare your self, study, practice and so on, be it at a school or self-thought (In my case, I had no choice, this being my 3d career!) which will "make you ready for when the opportunity comes"
#3 Have your presentation ready and looking good! be it a portfolio or website. Which at the beginning, I had nothing more than my own bike's livery and the rest were just digital proposals! Which got me a club racer's project, which later got me an AMA supersport project for the HSBK team.
#4 Once you are doing what you love, you will meet people "in that world". I knew the manager of the Qatar circuit, we became good friends over the years (Yes some of these things take "years"!) He got me paddock passes for MotoGP every year and this gave me access for step 5.
#5 There is a Steve Jobs video in which he speaks about how sometimes, is just about "asking", and so I did! I had my design portfolio, biz cards and had built a nice website (During my lunchtime while I worked at James Perse as the head men's pattern maker) walked around the GP paddock, went up to the team managers and introduced my self, from which only ONE of them took some interest, Gino Borsoi from the Aspar team, but from here it took another 2 years for anything to happen with him!
#6 Year 2 of chatting with Gino and still just having some club racers and the AMA supersport team to my name, I got the email asking for a proposal for their 2014 season with Nicky Hayden (I had the pleasure of being introduced to Nicky as the designer of his bike's livery later! such an honor, so long champ), Drive energy drink and a Honda "customer" bike, one step below the satellite bikes, just 1.6 mill Euros bike-canvas! As they say, be careful about what you wish for because you just might get it. I did my proposal for the bike, they loved it so much they also asked me to do the truck, racing suit and pit box-garage! I went from an AMA supersport team to a GP team, not bad :) (See more of the Aspar job and more here )
In short: talent, preparation, presentation, networking, just ask..perceiver, ask and ask, AND deliver, the very same forces that drive Pagnol, from design to its presentation and its growth.
At the end of chapter 1, I mentioned how I was going in the wrong direction with my unplanned and unwanted career as a pattern maker and tech designer, it kept "pulling me back in"! But was it really the wrong direction?
The career I hated drove me to start SMD and Pagnol, working on it during lunchtimes, nights and weekends, but very important, it gave me the skills and know how to create what I call, THE holy grail of motorcycle fits for jackets and pants. If it wasn't for that experience, I would not even known how to begin to create and engineer our signature slim fits.
So on one had my unwanted career kept pulling me back in, but on the other, "I" was already working on the foundation of much better things to come!
Sorry to leave you in almost the same spot than chapter 1! but I have decided to do these twice a month instead of once. Next up, Chapter 3, the ball rolling for Pagnol as a real moto gear brand and the Shinya Kimura shop and inspiration.