Terese Alstin is a industrial designer and entrepeneur based in Malmö, Sweden. She started few months ago a new adventure, opening an e-commerce called No Sir: here you can find exclusively products made by “Kickass Female Designers in the field of interior design”.

Here is my interview to Terese, made via Skype few weeks ago: I’m so excited to share her story with you!

Hi Terese, please tell me something about your background: where are you from, what did you do before, …

Paola, have you heard about an invention called Hövding, the world’s first airbag bicycle helmet? Well, I’m one of the two designers of that product: I worked on developing it and putting on the market since 2005 with my fellow-founder Anna Haupt.
We started a company to realize the product, and financed the project with venture capital: we raised 15 millions Euros from more than 10 different investors. Each had a different opinion about how to drive the company, and in the end there were too many disagreements with the new CEO and the board and we decided to leave.
I left without really knowing what to do next, so I took a month of “vacation” to think about my future and pretty soon I knew I wanted to start a new company, because after so many years building a company it was difficult to visualize myself as an employee working for someone else.

What about the concept of No, Sir? How did you develop it?

I decided to be independent from others, and started developing No Sir project in spring 2015, writing a business plan, contacting the banks about their loans and then starting to look for female designers out there, to find the ones I wanted to collaborate with.
I wanted to focus on not so established ones, the ones building their own company and creating a name for themselves.
It was not easy, because they are not so visible. I scanned the internet and searched through my connections and I set a goal: I wanted to have 40 designers at the time of launch, in order to make people understand my ambition.

Are you planning to develop the project offline too?

I initially planned to have a showroom, a pop up shop and a website by the time of launch. But then, everything takes more time than you think, so I decided to start with launching the website in mid November.
I’m now preparing the showroom in my office in Malmö and eventually I would like to open pop up stores in cities where I have connections, where there’s people I work with: I think about for instance London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. But this is not my priority right now, I try to follow my intuition and do what feels right at the time, but maybe in the fall…
Since I’m financing the business on my own I will let the company grow organically and slowly.

What kind of message do you want to convey with No, Sir?

I just want to bring awareness, people have to know that female designers are struggling a lot in the design business, as they are not given the same opportunities their male colleagues have.
In the design educations there are much more female students than male, but after education, female designers don’t get as many employments, as many projects, as many design awards, etc. etc.
The design world has a strong hierarchy: opinion leaders and decision makers are usually male and I think this situation is a result of conscious decisions mixed with a little bit of laziness, a little bit of not caring so much about the issue.
I don’t think end consumers are so aware of this, because very often when a designer works for a big brand, his or her name is not exposed.
But consumers don’t want just to buy an object, they also want to buy a story, which brings a lot of value to the product and I think this is often forgotten.
Everybody wins if there’s more diversity.

Is this project helping the designers themselves to increase their awareness? Do you have feedback about this?

I get a lot of feedback, it’s exciting and really motivating.
Many designers say they are happy about the initiative as they are not really used to being in a position where being a female is a positive thing.
It’s never been an advantage, so they feel encouraged too.
Me and the designers are in the same situation, we’re at an early stage of our businesses, so it’s important to help each other.
I think that because there are less career opportunities for women, it’s more rare to see women supporting each other. But we have to understand that there’s a lot to win in helping each other, it’s so important to work in collaboration: I would love to inspire other female entrepreneurs to do so.
No Sir is getting a lot of publicity, media and bloggers as yourself are very interested: this is a clear sign that it’s an interesting subject, something people really want to discuss and this is my aim.
But there are so many decision makers that are not interested in having this debate, because they are probably happy with the situation as it is: being a very subjective field, it’s very common to come up with arguments like “aren’t you afraid of making the situation worse by grouping female designers together like this? Could it have a negative impact?”.
I think this is just a way to put an end to the discussion and I think it’s very important to be aware that when you have a negative response like that it could be an intentional way to kill the discussion.

And now, the most difficult question: what’s your favourite object from No, Sir shop? Why is it so special to you?

I have a special connection with all of them, as I don’t just choose the objects but also the designers behind them, I’m looking for not only innovative projects but for designers with a special point of view, so it’s much more about the person behind the object, than the object itself.
But if I have to pick one to mention, I would like to mention the Zick Zack Side Tables by Olga Bielwaska, a Polish designer based in Hamburg.
This project is very special because I helped her to put it into production, and actually it’s being produced here in Malmö: it was just a prototype when I found her and I couldn’t believe that nobody had started producing it already!
This project is very special to me because I helped to make it happen.