Driven by Design

Modo used to be just another struggling manufacturer in a crowded niche. Now it's virtually untouchable. Its secret: design.

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Greta Garbo or Bob Costas? For Modo Inc. CEO Bob Marchant, it's a puzzler. Garbo exudes that dusky, mysterious sexuality, but the broadcaster's no-frills demeanor is solid, reassuring. Which of the two personas, wonders Mar-chant, would a medical technician prefer to sense animating his rolling cart?

It's not the kind of question that Marchant learned to ask as an M.B.A. candidate at Columbia University, nor in his tenure at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The queries that attend the birth of a product traditionally hew to the quantitative: How much will it cost to produce? How many can we sell? Will we earn a profit on it? And Marchant does ask those questions -- just not first thing.

First he wants to know about the end user. OK, that's not too tough. Modo, based in Beaverton, Oreg., manufactures carts that hold medical equipment and supplies, so the user will be a doctor, a nurse, an orderly, or a technician. But Marchant wants to know more. Is the user a man or a woman, for example? What kind of car would he or she like to drive? Where will the cart be used? A cart that's visible to patients in the ER might benefit from sleek curves and "warm" shapes that make it appear less clinical, more humane. And how should it feel? Under 30 pounds is too flimsy; over 80 pounds, too bulky. What is the precise weight at which the user will exclaim, "How easily this moves! How substantive it seems!"

Those are the sorts of questions that design professionals routinely ask, and Marchant has trained his 15 employees to ask them. All the time. And not just about products. Because Marchant understands that design -- the ultimate know-it-when-I-see-it ingredient that has been awarded competitive-weapon status by the likes of Tom Peters and Steve Jobs -- can be applied to almost everything a business does. You can design processes. You can design experiences. You can design interactions. You can design physical space. And if you design all those things, Marchant believes, you can create an organization that blends aesthetics and efficiency to build products that blend aesthetics and utility.

"Design is in everything we do," says Marchant, who at 50 has the easy good looks and glib delivery of a local newscaster. "From our fax forms to our office space, our company is driven by design."

Much of that design is of the visual variety. The company's Web site has a sleek, minimalist look and is arranged, in Marchant's words, so that "the product becomes the hero." Modo's sales-quote form has been refined, based on customer feedback, to such a state of clarity and simplicity that it is returned two to three days earlier than the previous iteration. Modo's industrial-chic office is an open, loftlike studio where employees sit side by side amid countless foam prototypes. And don't call Modo's brochure a brochure. It's "a portfolio, a two-dimensional visual mall," says Marchant, describing the embossed logo and large photos laid out on the sort of glossy, high-quality paper stock that an architectural firm might use.

"Have you ever seen a paper clip like that?" asks Marchant, holding up a brochure fastened with one of the ingenious metal curlicues he buys from Japan. "Everything you're looking at conveys a sense of purpose, a sense of deliberateness, a sense of precision, a sense that these guys get it."

THE LOVE OF LOOK: Bob Marchant knows that design is anything but superficial. Done right, it can enrich products, experiences, and entire organizations.

Predictably, Modo has earned numerous design awards and has collaborated on customers' products with design firms such as Ideo and Design Continuum. But design, says Marchant, is also responsible for the company's business success. The world's largest original-equipment manufacturer of medical carts, $6-million Modo has grown at a 20% clip since 1997. (Marchant projects annual revenues of $20 million within five years.) It is a key supplier of rolling carts for, among others, General Electric, Siemens, and Philips Electronics, which buy the carts to support medical devices they make. And those customers aren't exactly swooning over the product's Bauhaus-inspired handles or its carefully considered color palette. In Modo's brochure, Medtronic, for example, praises Modo for reducing its time to market; Tektronix, for helping to increase its sales and profits. Marchant is similarly prosaic, describing his company's goals as "providing product solutions that are profitable for our customers."

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