Design, Craft & Commerce
I work with craft-led brands to give craftsmanship a commercial life.
Product strategy, collection development and maker partnerships. Product Director of The New Craftsmen, then Managing Director of its relaunch.
Product strategy, collection development and maker partnerships. Product Director of The New Craftsmen, then Managing Director of its relaunch.
Defining a product strategy that is creatively compelling and commercially sound – connecting what you make to the reason it sells.
Leading collections from concept to production, working closely with internal teams and external collaborators.
Connecting brands with exceptional makers, and managing those relationships so quality and consistency hold as you grow.
Curating programmes that turn brand and product into something an audience can step inside.
My production knowledge spans a broad range of disciplines and ways of working – heritage skills and new technologies, small-batch repeat production and one-off commission, for commercial and private clients. That knowledge is built through years of hands-on prototyping and sampling: how a material behaves, what a process can repeat reliably, and what it takes to get from a first sample to a viable, marketable product. At the heart of it is a passion for materials and making, and close, honest relationships with makers – which is also where the story comes from. A collection sells on what it is made of and who made it, as much as on how it looks.
Product strategy for a British luxury lighting and furniture brand.
Porta Romana makes lighting and furniture for some of the most beautiful interiors in the world – largely by hand, in Britain. I have worked with the team since the summer of 2025 as product strategy consultant.
The engagement has combined range review and facilitated strategy sessions with the senior team, helping to shape product direction for the years ahead.
Detail of this work is held under NDA. Porta Romana is named here with their agreement.
Seven years developing the collections, then relaunching the business around them.
At The New Craftsmen as Product Director I shaped the ranges and built the relationships with the makers behind them. When the original business ceased trading in 2022, I reopened it the following month as Managing Director, in partnership with the gallerist Sarah Myerscough.
Reopening drew on what I already knew: the product, the commercial picture, and the makers themselves. They stayed, the strongest existing work carried over, and we added new collections alongside it.
Where the original had sold across trade, private clients and online, we focused the new business on the international luxury interiors market. We relaunched at Collect at Somerset House in spring 2023, followed by Artefact at the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, and an exhibition at Cromwell Place for London Design Festival.
Developed with makers across glass, ceramics, leather and textiles – much of it at The New Craftsmen.
My career has been spent in the service of makers – and of the businesses that know how to champion them.
I am a business founder with experience across the private and not-for-profit sectors. Every role has circled the same problem: businesses built on making things by hand are usually asked to choose between making well and selling well. I have never thought that choice was real.
I now work independently with design-led brands, retailers, makers and collectors, building commercially-driven collections that reinvent traditional techniques into contemporary work entwined with history and place.
Alongside this I work as a creative business coach at Cockpit, the London craft studios, supporting around fifty makers across its two sites.
The strength clients tend to name is an empathetic leadership style – the ability to draw the best out of collaborators, staff and creatives, and to help a room of strong opinions reach a decision they all own.
I'm usually brought in when something is about to change – a new collection, a new market, a business finding its next shape. I take on a small number of engagements at a time, from a single workshop to an ongoing partnership.
hello@kathylacour.com