Q&A with Hotbox Managing Director Jamie Rothwell
Hotbox H4 designed by Broome Jenkins
Our team have had the privilege of working closely with Jamie Rothwell, Managing Director at Hotbox; manufacture of great looking, functioning and sustainably focussed products, that help drive the modern flexible workplace. We know that Jamie’s business ethos, and sector knowledge, is second to non, so we sat down to ask him a few questions!
Can you introduce Hotbox and your role?
Hotbox products allow you to quickly and efficiently set up and define your workspace anywhere. We want to make working anywhere easy. We empower global businesses through the design and manufacture of great looking, functioning and sustainably focussed products, that help drive the modern flexible workplace. My role within Hotbox as founder is to keeping pushing and searching for new ideas by talking to customers and observing trends. Post pandemic we are going through a fascinating time of change, giving us the opportunity to solve people’s problems and make the best of the spaces available to them so they can easily work anytime, anyplace, or anywhere.
Why did you have so much confidence in the agile working market when you launched your first Hotbox product?
When I started Hotbox, the office was a very static environment. Most people came in and sat at the same desk all day every day. However, as hotdesking began to take off, people had to start sharing desks, moving their personal things, and storing them away from a desk. I could see the problems my customers were experiencing trying to adapt to this new way of working. One of the biggest issues they had was where do they store personal things, the tools they need to work with on a daily basis? In the old static office people stored these things in a pedestal under their desk, this was no longer worked in an agile shared desk space. The industry response to this was to adapt the office pedestal, to add a tow bar so people could drag this around the office. It just didn’t work for my customers or for me, and I knew there must be a better solution which is what drove me to invent the original Hotbox. Once I had come up with the concept it just seemed too obvious. I wondered why no one else had thought of this. I spoke to many customers and other contacts within the industry and most of them thought it was a great idea, although a lot also thought it was a bad idea too! But I just couldn’t ignore the fire that had been lit and the positive feedback I had, this just seemed too good an idea not to try.
Hotbox is synonymous with agile working; how have you so successfully captured the market?
That’s a good question. I think because the product was so unique, and many potential competitors just didn’t understand it and therefore didn’t take us very seriously for a long time. We just kept talking to our customers, understanding what they really needed and built a very strong independent brand, kind of under the radar. Users really took us to heart and started to specify Hotbox in more and more of their global offices. This got the attention of contract furniture manufacturers and their dealers and by this time we had become the only independent global manufacturer of this type of product. If Amex wanted Hotbox in Brighton, New York, Singapore, or Mumbai they could get it via any of their corporate furniture suppliers so they could offer the same great agile work environment to all their people. Hotbox as a term has become synonymous with an agile work box, rather like Hoover did with the vacuum cleaner.
At a time when other businesses have struggled [throughout Covid] Hotbox has achieved great success through new product launches and brand development, why have you succeeded when others haven't?
Communication, I guess and the right product for the right time. But the foundations for this success started a long time ago. We are always interested in what our customers are doing, how they are working and where. This insight gives us the inspiration to try new things and improve our communication to help educate and empower our customers. Many of them come to us to learn how other customers have adapted, what ideas they can use to help create great workplaces for their teams. Even before the pandemic, the working world was in constant change. As we emerge from this seismic shift, where you work is becoming irrelevant. How you work, productivity, and outputs are becoming the focus. It is more and more important to be able to quickly and efficiently get up and running wherever you are.
You work collaboratively with your designers, why have you chosen to work in this way and how does it impact the products you launch?
We like to work with people that we like, that push us and inspire us. While we have a good design base within the company that allows us to form ideas and concepts, we choose then to work collaboratively with external designers who have more specific design knowledge and experience. For example, with new materials or new technologies like we recently did with Shuttle. This was a whole new direction for us with specific material and design needs. Broome Jenkins were a perfect partner for us with this as they had both the experience and industry connections to make this project a success.
What's next for Hotbox?
We are about to launch Hotbox 4, which we again chose to develop with Broome Jenkins. Hotbox 4 is our most adaptable desk storage yet and is a product that we developed from feedback over the last 2 years. It is designed with flexibility in mind, with interchangeable dividers and utility pots which allows for multiple set ups along with an integrated laptop riser which makes working anywhere more ergonomic and comfortable. The key drivers for all our products are great design, functionality, and sustainability. Hotbox 4 combines these principles perfectly and incorporates next generation production materials. Hotbox 4 is made from post-consumer recycled plastic, which we are very proud of and excited about.
H4, designed by BroomeJenkins, is the latest product to be launched by Hotbox. You can discover H4 for yourself on our Venue Tables stand at Clerkenwell Design Week. You can find us at POP in the famous Fabric Nightclub on stand LS06, we are right by the entrance so we’ll be hard to miss!