The brand plays on for pioneering designer

Real Estate Weekly, Dec 22, 2004

Concept Labz is a comprehensive brand/image design firm led by Carlo Alessi, an award winning designer and brand specialist with 25 years of experience on an international level. Concept Labz is an affiliate of Jarmel Kizel Architects and Engineers, Inc. of Livingston, New Jersey, one of the region's leading architecture and engineering firms.

The organization is supported by a multi-disciplined team of experts ranging from brand analysts, interior, industrial, graphic and technology designers that enhances and expands the scope of services previously offered by Jarmel Kizel.

Under Carlo Alessi's leadership, Concept Labz has assembled an impressive team of specialists in each of the disciplines offered. The industries currently being served by Concept Labz include retail, manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality and institutional.

Concept Labz offers and implements a wide range of creative services that focus on the holistic realization and application of brand development and its translation as a cultural extension of any organization.

This process encompasses an analytical, insightful understanding and construction of the clients' business model and the methodology required to ensure its successful realization in all forms of extension. The process engages the combination of Concept Labz disciplines ranging from concept development, graphics, environmental design inclusive of product and furniture, as well as advanced digital experience through technology as instruments of accomplishment in order to deliver a distinct and cohesive message.

According to Carlo, his interest in brand and design began on Sunday, February 19, 1964 at 8 p.m. seated in front of a black and white RCA television set anticipating the arrival of the British Invasion simply known as the Beatles.

What does this have to do with design and branding and how could Carlo have possibly known that this would map the course of his career? The answer is he was inspired by a seminal event to chart a career path for himself that would challenge existing barriers and perceptions and blaze a trail of creativity innovation, and excitement.

Forty years after being "creatively awakened" by the Beatles, Carlo Alessi remains inspired by the strategic and tactical brilliance of the late Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager.

According to Carlo, Epstein was potentially the greatest brand and marketing mind of our generation. Epstein may not necessarily be credited for bringing the cosmos together into perfect alignment and harnessing the forces that assembled what may be the most influential movements of the twentieth century, however, his navigation of the Beatles brand to a 73-million-person American audience created the greatest cultural revolution that shaped and influenced the way we would still view and interpret music, art, design and fashion forty years later.

The brand was delivered with the precision of surgical strike penetrating at the core of where every brand hopes to reside, our emotions. "For members of my generation, it ignited the fuse of intellectual curiosity, possibility and a borderless world. For members of my parent's generation it fueled uncertainty and confusion," Alessi commented.

Upon his graduation from the University of Toronto, Carlo Alessi found himself challenged with discovering a method of pursuing a career path that would permit him the creative liberty he had enjoyed in music, while applying the academic disciplines that he had so deservedly earned. Carlo explored several corporate possibilities but found that the highly structured and highly political environments were not the place where a young man in pursuit of the next big idea could find his voice. It was then that he realized that he was entrepreneurial by nature and should seek an environment that nurtured like-minded individuals looking to build a community that embraced economically productive cultural experiences.

Carlo Alessi found this community in the design and planning department of the T. Eaton Company, a prestigious and successful chain of department stores. The position he was awarded was that of National Director of Design and Planning for the Home Furnishing Division. The level of responsibility demanded the coordination of a highly talented staff of designers and project managers, as well as a liaison for the merchandising management and vendors. The principle role of the department was to create permanent and flexible brands and an environment within the national departments to represent the merchants' acquisitions reflecting market trends and directions, once again the concept of defining the brand and all its related expression.

After leaving the T. Eaton Company, Carlo was recommended for a much more senior position as President of the McLaughlin Corporation group of companies. Mr. Alessi's position required him to oversee eight companies with diversities ranging from consumer products, chemicals, plants and fabric mills. His business activities were global and it was during this time that he was given the extraordinary privilege of applying his personal and business skills to establish the organization as a leader in a global marketplace.