Ziba Founder, Sohrab Vossoughi, Inspires in Portland
May 06 2009
Here is my twitter stream from this morning’s Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast event where Ziba Founder, Sohrab Vossoughi, inspired me from a creative and entrepreneurial standpoint. Sorry for the upside down notes, but you’ve got to start at the bottom and read up:
- Craft culture is mostly anti-Big which is why #portland has few fortune 500 companies here
- Sohrab – branding portland – it has a craft culture. About the work, unpretentious, very real, natural
- Tribal love – costco – amazing brand. costco members and employees love that brand. Costco does not care about wall st, but main st
- Starbucks is trying to capture its dna that is there but they’ve lost their way. Now, more about efficiency and profit, not the experience
- You need to create love with your consumers. All touchpoints need to fully connect with specific target market
- Ziba has evolved from product design company to customer experience firm
- Sohrab – design thinking is all about making the complex clear
- For agencies – the cultural ingredient mix that is the special sauce. Cultural context of ziba often takes 18 months on average.
- Designing consumer experiences – meaningful to consumer, strategic to the brand
- Ziba other offices are san diego, tokyo, shanghai – I did not know they are so global
- What breaks did you get? Sohrab – “you make your own luck”
- 25 year anniversary for ziba this year
- Sohrab started ziba because of an entrepreneur named sam bosh who gave sohrab royalties for designing a new atm machine
- Sohrab, right before college graduation, fell in love with industrial design – a mix of engineering and art
- At portland biz journal breakfast with sohrab @ziba – he started feeling the downturn in dec 07, but since feb 09 lots of new small projects
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May 6th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Portland’s craft culture makes it even more important for businesses to think about the customer experience. It’s a small place and word travels fast, good or bad.