Design @ Metal

Sabi, a line of branded, ergonomic products for the aging.

1. Finding the right opportunity.
Rather than intuiting some need out of the ether or working toward his big idea over a decade, Assaf Wand, founder of Sabi, applied a mix of analytics, hustle, and hard work to finding an overlooked business opportunity.

2. Finding the niche.
He stumbled upon some astonishing factoids: People over 50 account for 67% of America’s consumption. So they should be the most highly sought after demographic, right? Wrong: Only 5% of marketing spending is geared toward them. And if you look within that 5%, 92% of it is pharmaceuticals and financial products. “That’s when the lightning bolt hit me.” He started looking around for brands geared toward boomers, and then realized that there was basically nothing. “Everything is very medicinal and disgusting,” he says. “I wanted to build something a lot more positive.”

3. Finding the needs.
In his research he found that boomers aren’t aging like the generation before them. Their values are more progressive. They’re into organic products. They’re more worldly. They adapt to change more readily. They’re into aesthetics. But they’re not in a position of being taken care of: They’re taking care of their kids, and taking care of their own parents, even as they’re aging into worse eyesight and arthritis. “That’s when I officially launched Sabi,” says Wand.

4. Finding the right design partner.
The most successful brands always value great creative mind and have great design partners. Nike has Wieden Kennedy. Apple has Chiat Day. Target has Peterson Milla Hooks. Sabi has a great marketing mind in Wand who teamed up with a great creative mind in Yves Behar.

5. Finding the right products
Successful brands have something in common. They are in a space that had never been successfully branded before: For Oxo, it was kitchen utensils; for Simple Human, it was trash cans. By operating in an unbranded space, you have less competition. You can demand more margins. And you can push the envelope more, because consumer expectations haven’t been carved in stone.

6. Find the right solution
For Sabi, aging boomers aren’t yet ready to acknowledge their infirmities. They’re fighting against the realization. How do you design products that most people over 50 would rather not admit that they need? The solution that Behar proposed was to have the ergonomic features become a subtle feature of the design. They’d be a seamless part of the form factor. In other words, design products that solve the problem without letting everyone who knows them know that they have a health problem i.e. arthritis, hearing, eyesight etc…
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Metal is a strategic multidisciplined design firm in beautiful San Francisco.
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