“I was studying business in University of Mumbai, but I was being passionate about creativity,” says, Fenny Ganatra, the bespoke Designer of the avant-garde Bounce. What this passion led to was enrolling into a product design course at Raffles Design International in Mumbai. The daughter of a leading jewelry manufacturer in India having grown up in and around precious gems and jewelry design might have just allowed her to develop her “designing métier”.

As she immersed herself into design, mentors, and inspiration, she  along with her husband became quite certain about building a company that believed in evolution of business models and mandates. Akhil Ganatra her husband had already ventured into operations across healthcare to real estate to engineering consultancy with One Evolve Group allowing the company to encompass many verticals under the moniker, One Evolve Group.

Black and Pink Bounce Chair

Once Fenny’s creativity really began to spark and as the couple immersed themselves into understanding the design industry they together they decided to get into product design and retail with Fenny’s talents and Akhil’s acumen that led to floating Bounce Innovations. The company is confident about its experience and ability to understand how to translate good design into a functional reality in a cost efficient manner – while being capable of leveraging their marketing clout all across the globe and “Hopefully, through our design house, we will truly shrink the world even further.” They plan to not just make good product design that is cultivated in India accessible and affordable, but are also in the process off brining International designs to the Indian market.

The couple are going to attempt to cater to designs that are not just functional but also “hyper experiential.” Bounce, stands testament to this, as the first innovative, exciting and now much talked about design to spring out of the company. In keeping with the promise of hyper-experience the bespoke Fenny Ganatra design for Bounce is a reflection of her own personality – vibrant, cheerful, relaxed and a lot of fun. The chair was recently showcased at Maison & Object, in Paris 2012 and was well received.

Fenny Ganatra on her creation, posing for the Press

All About the ‘Bounce’
“The concept for Bounce first hit me during my course at Raffles Institute when I was working on a project”. Here she discovered a non-traditional medium, silicone that she says “sent my brains into an overdrive.” This then led her to do rounds of companies that make silicone. “All I wanted then was to get my hands on their waste!”

Determined to use silicone  which had traditionally been underused or rarely used in lifestyle product design, she then had the task of conjuring up what she would use this in. “I started searching for a concept by looking into my personality own personality which I have been told is vibrant, cheerful, relaxed,  colorful and full of life. Then the agony began to translate these attributes into a product and finding the right materials to execute this.”According to her profile on the Bounce website, she looked to Ross Lovegrove, designs mandate of “organic essentialism” that means using nothing more or less than needed to execute the design. “Once I had homed in to the material the drawing process started. Hundreds of renderings later, creating a seating innovation was almost instinctive.”

Getting It Done
This then led to some happy globetrotting which allowed her to discover efficient injection molding shops, devising colour schemes, product safety tests and guidelines as well as tests for durability and tensile strength. We also had to choose from the right kind of silicone to designing the polycarbonate base and the colour schemes and finding a factory that would translate it best – basically the whole gamut of shenanigans that takes to commercially produce a design. We also had experiential surveys, with gleeful results.

“In design terms, Bounce represents what I call “hyper-experiential” feel to the products that can range from the extreme to the sublime, in addition to its functional use. Basically, Bounce is a minimal design with playful form that offers a new experience in seating. The web of cords that form the seat provides lumber support by adapting the shape of the body without the use of any mechanical parts. Bounce is made up of Polycarbonate and a proprietary manufacturing process silicone seat, resulting in Bounce being weatherproof, strong, stackable and a lightweight product.

Bounce truly reflects my personality – comforting, relaxed, vivacious, fun-loving and full of life. As Bounce is launched globally, I feel vindicated!”

Attention to Detail
Great attention and loads of work hours have been devoted towards even minor attributes like the spacing between silicone cords and the tension to create the bounce effect truly makes the product radical. The knit had to be correct in order to offer the right amount of bounce for comfort. More importantly, the webbing had to adjust itself to the weight of the body to offer lumbar and spinal support to the user.

Visitors at the Maison&Object in Paris Bounce display finding new ways to enjoy the chair

Limitations Felt
Oh, a designer faces loads of limitations – and that is the fun part. When you design a product, you have a concept. First it is in two dimensions, then it evolves into 3 dimensions. And yet you have no clue how will the concept translate physically in a tangible manner. This process itself is tedious, challenging but highly exciting.

Even the manufacturers need to really become immersed into your concept. And then you need to struggle along with them to create what you have in mind. It calls for a technology support, manufacturing process support, logistics and material support, all of which might not be available at one place. Add to that a creative fatigue, unending frustrations, the endless cups of coffee and conversations and an inability to explain or understand, and the limitations can never be described. But it is totally worth it all, when you get the product right!

Design and Trends
I read a lot and like all women I shop a lot too. So yes visually and mentally I am constantly primed and alert to the trends that are sweeping different cultures. I personally have never thought about staying a couple of steps ahead or behind trends. For me product designing is not a rat race like it appears in fashion design where you need to be competitive.  Product design is a bit different. The stimulus is constantly around you. I just try to be an astute observer of the environment I live in and the designing will happen when the stimuli is right. Then all you need is a trigger – maybe something totally inconsequential – and then, Voila! The concept hits you like a tonne of bricks.”

Timelessness
According to me, beauty is timeless. Emotions like awe, joy, ecstasy, exuberance, exhilaration, pathos are timeless. Simplicity is timeless. Even functionality is timeless. Class is timeless too. Ways of expressing the above vary with time, cultural evolution and technology. Sense of aesthetics, sophistication, colours etc might change with time and periods. I think if a design captures any of the above timeless attributes, in any fashion, it’s a great design. With Bounce I have tried to achieve the same. My means to achieve the same is kind of minimal, but the design per se, I hope will last for a long long while.

Awareness Today
Awareness and different sense of aesthetics with the ability to assimilate different cultural nuances and integrate them into their lifestyle behaviours with the opportunity and ease of availability of knowledge in today’s world.

Inspiration
My husband Akhil, my parents and my teachers. I have also been influenced by all great artists, fromPicasso to Goya to Ross Lovegrove and Dieter Rams.

The Bounce Team

Good Design
I don’t think there is anything like a good designer or a bad designer, its just how you convert your ideas/concepts to reality & make it available for the people to have better experiences in their daily life with these designs.

She keeps her designing principles simple and non-cluttered design is a quotient of style, attitude and emotions – in short a personality reflector. “Once an idea hits me, I’m restless till I am able to execute the concept in a simple, minimalist manner. It’s a constant battle between inspiration and perspiration until a product is launched.”

Future Plans:
A few of them are on the drawing board, but till the concept is crystal clear in my head, like magicians, we designers also never tell… But I will say is that I am concentrating on product and industrial design.

Parting Shot
What’s exciting, is that my restlessness has started again and that sure is a good sign for whatever comes next.