Helping Dunelm’s Customers Try Before they Buy

Hear from Harrison product designer, Charlotte Bush, on creating a fabric sample holder for national retailer, Dunelm.

Just two months into my product design career with Harrison, I started work on a project for one of our regular customers, the homeware retailer, Dunelm: could we produce a more economical solution to display pillowcases for customers to touch and feel the fabric? A very specific challenge that required a quick solution to accommodate an upcoming campaign.

We’ve worked with Dunelm for several years and we’re often asked whether we can improve a particular product to solve a particular problem or to design something innovative for a section of their store. However, taking this project from concept to shelf in just a matter of months wasn’t to be an easy task!

Providing the ideal solution…

That said, solving problems was one of the reasons I chose a career in product design; after establishing that I enjoyed maths and being creative, it seemed like the perfect fit! After some quick development, our solution was an injection moulded product that could securely hold fabrics of varying thickness (ideal for bedding, curtains, and linen); was easy to assemble and use; would fit securely to shelves; and could prominently display product information using a Harrison barker.

Introducing the new Fabric Sample Holder

We launched our Fabric Sample Holder in January 2022, just five months after receiving the initial brief. Currently being used in 157 Dunelm stores, with plans of a nationwide roll-out to all 170 sites, we’re all really pleased the project has been such a success. And hearing the CEO likes our solution, too, especially as it displays more material for customers to touch and feel (ideal for a retailer with such an enormous range of fabrics!) is very exciting.

I really enjoy being a product designer at Harrison; being presented with a problem and designing a solution, and then seeing my creation on the shelves in a national retailer is enormously rewarding. There is never too much time to ponder, however, as it’s on to the next design project to ensure our customers’ products are impossible to miss!

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By Charlotte Bush

Product Design Lead

A First-Class industrial design and technology graduate, Charlotte joined Harrison in 2021 as a technical designer following periods designing for a consumer electronics company and working at a product design consultancy designing for entrepreneurs and SMEs.

After just seven months of creating POS products at Harrison, Charlotte was promoted to product design lead, and working alongside three other designers, spends her day either thinking of solutions to customers’ POS problems, enhancing our current products or expanding our product offering by designing new innovative products.