You don’t get to 20+ years of trading without doing something right. Actually, you need to be doing something really quite well to be in business for this long, so what’s our secret?

To answer that we have to go back in time, to when it all started in the early 2000s. A product design and engineering consultancy is a risky business choice for a number of reasons, but starting one with a team of inexperienced designers and engineers is bordering on crazy.

That was 4c back in the beginning.

We had cutting edge computer software, a desire to please and literally millions of questions. It was our relentless curiosity that led to us making it past our 21^st birthday. Our experience has taught us a consultancy has a well-defined aging process that means we must learn from experience and build on our mistakes. We simply couldn’t call ourselves a consultancy if we didn’t.

We started out by saying yes, no problem, let’s do this. Unfortunately, you quickly learn that when something goes wrong, you saw it coming before anyone else. This leads to the awkward teenage years where you start to question the brief and risk upsetting the client, but we learned, right? We need to make sure what we are doing is useful and helpful, not doomed to failure.

Finally, as we celebrate the end of our education (although you never actually stop learning) we are asked simply to help. A true collaboration starts with a brief we have all written and researched together. After all, a problem well started, is a problem half solved…

4c takes the role of a consultancy even further than that. We call ourselves ‘Innovation Partners’ and actively seek relationships that benefit from a team of creative designers and engineers, who thrive on a challenge and are determined see the job done right.

So, what’s our secret?

We learned our purpose is to help with everyone else’s Why, by helping them understand what that is in the first place.