Show Notes
Sarah Gibson & Nicholas Karlovasitis leave uni, cram a fledgling furniture brand into a Newtown flat, and decide they are going to export Australian design to the world. That is the starting point for DesignByThem. In this episode we unpack how fifteen years later, they're actually pulling it off. We talk about building a design brand from a tiny local market, backing Australian designers, and choosing factories around the world without losing the integrity of the work. The conversation gets into IP, copies, pricing, cashflow, and why treating business as a design problem changed everything for them.If you care about turning design from a side project into a viable brand, this one is worth your time.
0:00 Intro 1:22 Why design still hooks them after all these years 3:00 Chasing ideas that make beautiful things accessible 4:08 Childhood Lego, pulling things apart and thinking like designers 5:11 Sarah’s path from obsessive floor plans to industrial design 6:10 Education, UTS and putting Australian industrial design on the map 7:34 Spotting the gap and founding DesignByThem as a collective 9:39 Building a platform for Australian designers not just a personal studio 11:02 Royalties, collaboration and why the best invoices go to other designers 13:08 Designers as business people and treating business like a design problem 15:09 Systems and spreadsheets 16:29 How they find designers and why so many wait to be discovered 19:29 Social media, saturation and why direct outreach still wins 21:35 Young designers, polish, missing knowledge and the AI trap 22:56 Why outsourcing the concept is a mistake and IP is everything 24:16 Using AI for the boring bits so more time goes into design 24:23 Sustainability, materials and designing for the full life cycle 27:15 Greenwashing, regulation and how far Australia needs to go 33:20 Working with architects and interiors and learning from clients 34:50 Feedback loops, data and using colour and custom work smartly 39:21 Australian craft as limitation and why they went global with manufacturing 41:42 Balancing local pride, accessibly priced products and global factories 43:52 Turning furniture design from a second job into a real career 45:03 Educating the public and putting the designer behind the product 50:03 How products, brands and spaces work together in the real world 53:12 Their Smart Design Studio workspace and why the setting matters 55:33 What they have learned, what they would change and why they still love coming to work
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We’ve wrapped season one of the Bespoke Careers Podcast. 42 episodes, from architecture students right up to institute presidents.Here's some of the best advice that stuck with us. Seven ideas worth hearing, from 196 years of combined experience.
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Illya Azaroff calls architecture his side gig. He's also the 2026 president of the American Institute of Architects and has spent 30 years responding to disasters around the world.His father arrived in the US as a displaced war refugee from Ukraine, and Illya grew up at a dinner table where hunger was a firsthand memory. That upbringing led to a degree in geography, then a career in disaster mitigation, and now the presidency of a 100,000-member institution.We get into what the presidency is like from the inside, why his kids are the reason he ran, the ethos he borrowed from the Kalinago people in the Caribbean, why nearly half of small businesses never reopen after a disaster, and the message he wants every architect to hear: you are more powerful to your community than you realize.
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