Celebrity Life

Founder of JS Aluminium Window Esmond Pat shares his foresight and lasting commitment to premium European-brand window frames, glazing and shuttering for the home and commercial buildings.

“In Hong Kong, people are knowledgeable, eager to learn more and pursue the best quality in everything they buy,” says Esmond Pat, managing director of JS Aluminium Window, by way of a preamble to the question of what inspired him to launch this niche high-end company. “The price of property here is sky high, so consumers care about the quality of their investment. And as global warming causes more frequent monsoon rages and other unfriendly weather, property owners push to adopt a safeguard first layer of protection.”

Pat identified growth potential in demand for quality windows and window servicing, and the rapid success of JS Aluminium Window seems to have proved him right. The company, which focuses on European frames and glazing, has enlarged its inventory of models, from initially stocking one brand to ranges by four of the continent’s most reputable manufacturers.

[caption id="attachment_211259" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Esmond Pat is the founder of JS Aluminium Window. (Image: Alison Kwan)[/caption]

“We only carry those we think they are the best,” he confirms. “We carry brands with many window and facade options that offer different solutions.” Some models are offered in an enormous range of subtly different colours, while others allow for the selection of premium frame metal or finishes. Choices also abound in how the windows function, with sliding, concertina and regular swing opening mechanisms.

Along with the core European window and shuttering facade systems, suitable for both residential and commercial structures, related offerings from Pat’s company include retractable sunshades, and typhoon-grade shutters handpicked to be able to withstand the most extreme sub-tropical weather challenges.

On Brand

Some key points of differentiation make the JS Aluminium Window portfolio of quality brands quite special, and worthy of their prices, Pat notes. “All are European proprietary systems. They have particularly high performance in thermal insulation and water management [repelling and draining capabilities]. The products we carry are the best of their kind on the market.

“We’re about offering the best bespoke solution to help our clients choose the right type of window that functions and performs in ways that they require. Also, the products’ clean designs and fine texture and finishing become [important] aesthetics and tasteful mood-setting elements.”

The company is the exclusive Hong Kong distributor of Aliplast Aluminium Systems — a Belgium-based company that specialises in windows, doors, conservatories, sliding systems and curtain facades — that strives for product innovation, design, technical capability and quality. JS Aluminium Window’s client base has risen so quickly that Pat has ventured into an element of production.

“In order to offer the highest bespoke levels and manage the quality of theses products, we have set up our own Aliplast factory in Shanghai,” he explains. “This shortens the production waiting times and freight costs for our architect and developer clients.”

[caption id="attachment_211261" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Cero by Solarlux.[/caption]

Other brands carried include Solarlux, a German maker known for high-performance bi-folding large-format windows; and Secco from Italy — with bespoke systems in precious premium materials.

Customer Satisfaction

While Pat’s clients are mostly in the architecture, interior design, property developer and construction industry fields, many individual customers approach JS Aluminium Windows directly. And those numbers of small property owners directly requesting glazing consultations have increased from 11 percent in the early years of business to a very sizeable 43 percent today. “In the beginning, it was mostly architects that came to us for fine products from a design perspective or looking for functional window solutions,” Pat says. “Nowadays, knowledge and information flows across the internet. Many individuals even come to us for a consultation before they start a makeover project they’re considering.”

Of the different clients — both construction industry and home or commercial building-owner — that JS Aluminium Window has, there are recognisable constants in their reasons for enlisting the company’s services, besides the elevated durability, function and aesthetics of the products alone.

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“We focus on and have put a lot effort into upholding the quality of both our communications and the deliverables,” emphasises Pat. “We’ve always had a 100 percent satisfaction rate according to client feedback. This is because of our superior precise bespoke-solutions service that matches the premium and high-performance products we carry. We had feedback from one architect who chose us over other international window-solution companies because he really appreciated the high level of our service.

Quality Costs

Weighing up the “value” in the premium cost of high-quality frames and glazing (or other panel materials within frames, shuttering and related products carried by JS Aluminium Window) is similar to other top-quality functional products. “You pay for what you get. Guaranteed-warranty ranges have little in common with their ubiquitously installed aluminium-framed counterparts,” Pat says. “Plus window maintenance is part of the standard service — not that it’s often called for with such premium products.” Even coloured coatings are guaranteed for 10 years (except for materials that are oxidation-active, such as bronze or copper).

“There are different reasons why people to come to us,” says Pat. “Our proprietary systems offer high acoustic performance [both indoor refraction of sound and keeping of external noise at bay], which I think many Hong Kong people need.

[caption id="attachment_211310" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Secco Sistemi - Window profile making of.[/caption]

“Our products are lightweight, which is handy for clients who wish to own a set of oversized windows in flats with high ceilings, and for room corner solutions that look neat and chic and are structurally reliable.

“Apart from aluminium windows, there’s a larger material selection; it definitely becomes more expensive if you are looking for more precious materials, such as bronze, brass — or stainless steel.

“The products speak for themselves, but most importantly each one is a [separate] installation module requiring precise calculations. There’s a lot of manpower involved in what we do — together with our premium products, we might not earn more than a random window supplier on the street for each project. But our goal is perfection — and that further explains our glowing client satisfaction record.”

[caption id="attachment_211260" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Esmond Pat at work: “I’m involved in almost every role."[/caption]

Pat is a hands-on director: “I’m almost in every role,” he admits. “Although we have comprehensive service and production flows and accurate communications across internal and client areas, I insist on constant reviews with our end-users, as there’s no room for error. Clients come to us looking for high-quality and standards, so I monitor the whole process chain, regardless of a project’s scale — client satisfaction is everything to me.”

The post Esmond Pat on the Importance of Quality Windows and Providing Bespoke Solutions appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Half a century, by any measure, is a milestone that warrants reflection.

The British designer Sir Paul Smith is doing just that in his Covent Garden office, a place instantly recognisable from the piles of books, walls covered with artwork and a vast collection of curios from around the world.

“After 50 years, one of the most joyful things [of the business] is being an independent company,” he says. “But equally that’s also the biggest burden right now, as there isn’t the support system of a big group ... But we’ve been good, and the great joy of independence is spontaneity.”

This uneasy year for fashion, for Smith like others, has signalled a recalibration of a well-worn system. There’ve been the obvious stressors – but even with a cancelled show and international book tour, Smith
hasn’t become too emotional over the recent state of affairs, as he’s “been too busy with everything else”.
“I honestly think that, out of this year, the affection for a brand that’s so down to earth and real will
hopefully shine through in a greedy corporate world,” he says. “Younger people, who are more socially and environmentally conscious, will hopefully take note.”

[caption id="attachment_211164" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Paul Smith with one of his customised Merican bicycles.[/caption]

With the business at 50, and Smith himself an energetic 74, the designer admits that it’s been a long, exhilarating but rather organic journey to the top. A young cyclist who aspired to become a professional rider, Smith’s dreams were dashed by a severe accident on his bike at 17, which rendered him bed-bound in hospital for months. After that, he found himself drawn to design and fashion while hanging out with an art-school crowd and meeting his future wife Pauline at 21.

“‘Art-school culture’, those words you used – it’s fantastic, it’s really true, that’s exactly what Paul Smith is, even today,” he says, adjusting his famous specs. The work from those schools is “always a bit wacky, radical and experimental ... You have to be brave enough to try new things ... and be ridiculous.”

Smith’s first store was a tiny, single 3-metre-by-3- metre box room “down a funny old corridor with no windows” at 6 Byard Lane in the provincial English city of Nottingham. When Paul Smith Vetements Pour l’Homme opened in 1970, he was just 24 years old. Soon his popularity grew, fuelled by his positive personality, and footholds into Europe were made with a show debut at Paris Fashion Week in 1976, held at a friend’s flat on Boulevard de Vaugirard. After starting with one men’s collection, his business now encompasses fashion for men, women and children, shoes, accessories, fragrance and home furnishings.

That art-school culture core “is very British in a way”, Smith says, and certainly the beginnings of the label were very British. There were no technical fabrics at the time – only local tweed, corduroy, wools and shirting were available to the young designer. “But my skill was persuading a mill to make me these fabrics in very unusual colours: pink, lilac, lemon or blues, instead of the usual schoolboy palette of burgundy,
black grey or country colours. It was quite revolutionary at the time.”

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Between the beautiful tailoring and fabrics, Smith pioneered a more playful, less formal approach to menswear in the ’80s, capturing the more relaxed sentiment of the fashion zeitgeist. The introduction of womenswear came in 1993, with the same approach to tailoring. While unisex-style dressing has become fashionable again in these past few seasons, Smith championed mixing men’s and women’s styles decades ago.

“I’ve always loved that boyish look,” the designer explains. “Pauline has a very slim figure and she’s
always enjoyed wearing a men’s-style shirt or a classic suit. I also enjoy how old film stars like Katherine Hepburn or Audrey Hepburn dressed, and a bit later on the Kennedys and American socialites, who often wore a shirt and capri pants with a little loafer.”

In the ’80s, Grace Coddington of US Vogue was soon putting Smith’s oversized shirts, raincoats, knits and blazers on the magazine’s pages, worn by superstar models such as Linda Evangelista and captured by the likes of Patrick Demarchelier and Bruce Weber. “It was a real breakthrough for me,” Smith recalls.

After Smith’s Fashion Week debut, his quirky, wearable eccentricism quickly found fans in France, then Italy. Soon it was Japan, where there’s still a cultish Paul Smith fandom. In Hong Kong, with its British colonial ties, the label immediately secured a strong and steady foothold in the market. That soon spread to Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China. Going global made Smith one of British fashion’s most recognisable names.

[caption id="attachment_211172" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The Paul Smith store on Melrose Avenue is one of the most Instagrammed buildings in Los Angeles.[/caption]

Today, his bright-pink modernist store on Melrose Avenue has become one of the most Instagrammed buildings in Los Angeles. But Smith opened his first American store 40 years ago in New York on 16th Street and 5th Avenue. Now with Paul Smith in 17 countries across five continents and more than 17,000 points of sale globally, the designer says that his Brit-born brand “is obviously very international now”.

“I’d get bored if all I did was fashion,” he says, glancing at the all the design objects and mementos scattered around him in the office. “Working on all these collaboration items, it’s a whole different mindset. The process of designing a light or a watch or some spectacles, they’re all contributing back to the world of a designer.”

Such range speaks of Smith’s approach to style as a part of creative culture at large. Each of his stores is different from the others – there’s no template, but a preference for architectural and interior individuality that’s dependent on locations. He’s worked on collaborations with the likes of Land Rover, Rapha, New Balance, Penguin Classics, John Lobb, Caran d’Ache and the Manchester United football team. Then there are the Mercian bicycles, the Giro d’Italia race and Leica camera collaborations, which touch on his original passion for cycling and his “other” main skill, photography.

“As a cyclist, designing the famous pink jersey for the Giro d’Italia race was just great, and it was blessed by the Pope – that was amazing,” says Smith with a smile. “And if I hadn’t become designer, I probably would have ended up as a photographer. My dad was an amateur photographer and I started taking photographs when I was 11. And when I was doing other jobs for money while running my first store, I was a freelance photographer for great magazines like Architectural Digest and Casa Vogue ... So obviously, the Leica collaboration was a favourite – it was my dad’s dream to own one and he never got to.”

[caption id="attachment_211173" align="alignnone" width="1024"] An outfit featuring the famous Spaghetti print from Paul Smith's 50 anniversary capsule.[/caption]

Smith was, in fact, one of the first fashion designers seriously to employ photographic print on fabric in the ’80s, using his own captures. And to celebrate his brand’s 50th anniversary, on September 30, he launched a special capsule of reimagined archive prints (including his famous Spaghetti print) on men’s and women’s sporty- street styles. Bold, contemporary, graphic prints appear on track tops, hoodies and a range of accessories.

There’s also the October launch of a book by Phaidon that celebrates his half-century – but instead of a typical fashion retrospective, based largely on runway archives, it features 50 curated items of special meaning to Smith and the brand, each signifying a year of business.

The freethinking art-school culture of the label still informs his attitude now, Smith says. He runs his meetings with a high sense of openness and experimentation.Throw in Smith’s own insatiable curiosity and a magpie- like proclivity for collecting, and the result is a unique ability to keep doing the unexpected.
“What’s exciting and humbling to me is that we’ve always had a relevance within the industry, and a lot of our clients have enjoyed my work for a long time. What’s really brilliant is that we have lots of younger customers too,” he explains. “Plus, we’ve got good manners, we’re nice people and we behave properly.”

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Bearing in mind the scale, scope and longevity of the label, there’s nothing more charming than a boss who, 50 years on, still works the shop floor on Saturdays, as Smith does at his Mayfair store. In the often-vicious world of high fashion, how strangely refreshing is it to encounter a designer renowned for niceness, rather than melodrama. Surely that’s partly been a key to the label’s longevity over the past five decades.
Fashion the Paul Smith way remains thought-provoking, even 50 years on, with a classic-with-a-twist aesthetic that’s inclusive rather than elitist.

There’s also that compelling message of hope, done with a cheeky British wink. You can see it in the collections, the vibrancy of autumn/winter 2020 – bolts of graphic contrasting colours, fluid tailoring and the juxtapositions of ideas.

“Irreverence and contradictions have become so important in a world that’s become so clichéd in some ways,” Smith explains when asked how he manages to keep things so fresh over so many years. “So much of it is so formulaic in this industry, but we’ve never ever had that approach.”

The post Paul Smith Reflects on Humble Beginnings, Spontaneity and 50 Years in the Business appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.