What If the Market Is Broken? A product designer on spotting failure, integrating engineering and design, and building something better.

After years working across engineering and product design, Gregor Aikman, managing director of Filament PD, saw the same problem repeat itself: ideas that looked good but couldn't be built, or solutions that worked but failed to connect with users. Filament PD was created to bridge that divide.

What inspired you to start your business?
It wasn't necessarily a single thing that inspired me and my co-founders Craig Lynn and Danny Kane to set up Filament PD – it was more drawn from our experience and collectively spotting what seemed to be a clear market failure. While at university I founded my first business, which led to me setting up a new company in an engineering group when I graduated. We operated essentially as an internal startup, focusing intensely on design for manufacture across diverse sectors. Through that work, I realised the market had a critical structural weakness: it offered two kinds of design agencies, and neither was complete for the majority of businesses.

On one side, you had the highly aesthetic, design-forward agencies, whose beautiful concepts often weren't feasible or viable. On the other, the pure engineering groups, whose robust solutions lacked design or market sensibilities. The only groups that managed both were the huge, multinational agencies - unaffordable to all but the largest brands. The realisation was that customers - from individual inventors to product leads in large organisations - needed an agency that could strategically integrate and manage both engineering maturity and design sensibility simultaneously.

Building on that earlier experience, I founded Filament PD to be that unique solution: the strategic partner that ensures a product is not just manufacturable, but economically viable and highly desirable from day one. This integrated approach, focused on user experience and delivering high-end value without the multinational price tag, is the core of our differentiation and the reason we exist.

What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
Our biggest challenge is more of an ongoing concern - in our business, you're always expected to deliver unique and disruptive products. You have to navigate your way around competition, budgets, intellectual property issues, and a host of other obstacles on each project – all of which set the challenge to deliver on a consistent basis.

Achieving that means you have to go beyond the traditional design mindset. A product can be nice to look at or use, but that doesn't make it unique or disruptive. So what we've tried to do differently from the 'guns-for-hire' consultancy model is lean into the customers we work with. It's not just about a technical response or product specification, it's about understanding the wider business opportunity and potential impact.

How do you handle failure or setbacks?
In the design process, dealing with failures and setbacks becomes second nature - there are a myriad of reasons why a product can face delays or end up being scrapped altogether, and many of those are difficult to control. So, when it comes to handling challenges as a founder or business leader, I inevitably end up leaning back into that experience.

I think most people have an instinctive tendency to react emotionally when a setback occurs or a project goes the wrong way. But, the best thing you can do is turn that into a data point or new step in the process. If a prototype fails, you assess why it happened, learn from the experience, and apply that to the next one. You try to remember it's not a personal failure, focus on what you can influence, how it can make the process better, and turn the experience into something positive.

What advice would you give to someone starting their own business?
Whether your business is product or service-oriented, you always need to be pushing boundaries. You have to ask strategically uncomfortable questions – why you're doing it, is it something that's actually needed, do customers even value it. If you're not willing to face those types of questions, then you're not innovating. So, be prepared for that level of rigour and scrutiny – and, while it may make things more difficult initially, if you put that investment in upfront you will be rewarded with a product, service, or even a business that can stand up to any challenge. But you can't push those boundaries alone – you need to create a culture of shared knowledge and support that helps you push through them. I didn't feel there was the support ecosystem that founders needed in Scotland, so I personally championed it with Filament PD and then by setting up the Smart Things Accelerator Centre (STAC) in 2021. STAC is there to make sure entrepreneurs in tech have access to the expertise, mentorship, and guidance on best practice that can help them develop scalable companies. So my advice on that front would be to either find or make the community you feel you need as an entrepreneur.

How do you stay motivated during tough times?
You go through a lot of tough times in product design – most of your professional life is spent uncovering things that won't work and it takes a lot of effort to develop ideas that are both innovative and different. Often, it's a case of remembering that nothing is permanent. I have enough experience now to know setbacks are, broadly speaking, isolated incidents and will pass. But, in those moments I find it helps to do two things: deliberately take a step back and reconnect with the original reason for creating Filament PD - to create great products. In the vast majority of cases, whatever issue we're facing will be similar to a challenge on another project where we rallied and got through it. Ultimately, we're trying to turn product ambitions into reality. After being in business for a decade, we know we are valued, customers lean on us, and they see us as strategically important. It's a reminder that the mission we're on goes far beyond tough times and isolated incidents where things aren't going as well as you'd hope. At the same time, even if a win is messy, hard won, or seems small, it's important to recognise and celebrate it. Whether that is positive feedback from a client or a product making it to market, these types of achievements can fuel you to get up again and keep on going.

What are your tips for achieving success?
Quite a lot of businesses confuse innovation with novelty. But real success needs to be strategic – it has to solve a problem rather than just be new. We always try to be true to that principle. A concept can't just be aesthetically pleasing or purely functional. And, even if it ticks both of those boxes, it needs to be scalable and economically viable too. A lot of that builds on the idea I mentioned about embracing uncomfortable periods and exposing yourself to intellectual discomfort. You're not doing anything that's important or groundbreaking if you can't answer challenging questions and push boundaries. And that can go hand in hand with building a culture and community that will provide objective support whenever you need it.