Born in South East England, Graham Brett graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design – London with a degree in Industrial Design. Following graduation, early experiences included working in Milan for grandees of late 20th century Italian design, Mario Bellini & Ettore Sottsass. Graham then returned to London and worked with The Design Council (UK) and then managed (Director) pioneering product designers Seymour Powell. Nineteen years ago, with co-founding partner Martin Riddiford, he set-up the UK’s leading product design consultants: therefore ltd.
Martin Riddiford has been working in product design consultancy for 30 years. Also trained at School of Art and Design, in his final year (1978) Martin was awarded the Leverhulme Travelling Scholarship - used for 5 months of travel/study in the USA. He then joined the newly formed Frazer Designers and within a year had licensed and brought to market a unique calculator design (Brinlock - Abacus) which had its origins in a student project. Martin’s role as the technical director of the company ensures that he is fundamentally involved in all key aspects of development work across all projects and his intuitive engineering ability and broad design expertise provides a progressive and inspiring climate within which the team of 30 employees thrive.
A postgraduate of the Royal College of Art, Jim specializes in product design development and management within design consultancy. His early career has been strongly influenced by design management role at Design Council London and manufacturing design at Philips in Europe. He presently manages clients, projects and partnerships as part of the business development function. His work is varied and challenging, encompassing largely innovation-led design commissions, as well as the prospects that lead to alternative commercial partnerships and ventures. Jim lives in Surrey with his family of hungry teenagers and daily runs the gauntlet of 2 wheel commuting into therefore’s central London studio.
Patrick has over 25 years product design experience since graduating in Industrial Design from Leeds School of Art & Design. He was the Grand Pris Winner of the National Nestle Student competition and has continued creating award winning designs ever since. Patrick’s knowledge of manufacturing process was formed early in his career whilst working as a staff designer for the European electronics giant, Philips at their global design headquarters in Eindhoven, Holland. Later Patrick employed his talents at the British Design Consultancy, Seymour Powell to make it one of the most successful design houses of the 1990s. Patrick joined Therefore in their second year and performs a wide range of creative design, innovation and leadership tasks. He created the multi-award winning coffee maker, Presso and has been pivotal in its commercialisation.
Mark has 30 years experience in retail including 14 years at Marks and Spencers, 8 with Kingfisher and 8 as commercial director at Lloyds Pharmacy. Mark left Lloyds to start a home health monitors business and within 3 years had supplied pharmacy chains in Asia and the US including Walgreens and Walmart and the main supplier of medical devices to Lloyds Pharmacy - with new light therapy products recently introduced into Boots - all of which have been designed by therefore over a 5 year period. This relationship has now developed further and Mark is delighted to be running the operational companies of therefore ventures.
Peter is an experienced early-stage entrepreneur and public and private company Director who will work with all of the Therefore Ventures portfolio companies to help guide their strategy and product development. As Commercial Director, Peter helped take Psion plc from 15 people to 1500, and through IPO to FTSE 250 status. Subsequently he helped take Sophos plc from 100 people to 1500, unusually moving from non-executive to executive director. In between and since then, he has served as a non-executive Director for a number of venture-backed companies, and currently is Chairman of Path Intelligence Inc., and Executive Chairman of KnowledgeMill ltd.
