NOW online

He made design history with his visionary creations. Verner Panton revolutionised the way the Sixties looked at design, especially with his interiors. The man‘s modest and impassioned manner was in considerable contrast to the image of the enfant terrible which the international design scene liked to associate with him. Today, fifty years later, his designs are among the most popular icons of the 20th century. What is remarkable above all is that his conceptual and formal ideas are only now being fully adopted in architectural and design trends, and are being used as the basis for further development – made possible by computer-aided design and production processes. Verner Panton was ahead of his time.

– A unique European Trend Study –

In northern Europe 40% of all business travellers are women and in Germany the number of travelling business women (currently 25%) is rapidly rising too.

Lufthansa has already responded to this trend by publishing a magazine especially aimed at businesswomen and a few hotels have started, hesitantly, to take note of their female guests.

Since the great stock exchange crash in 2000 the stock price of the Japanese electronics manufacturer Sony has never really recovered. In the past year alone, it dropped by about 27 percentage points at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Unlike its competitors Sony showed not much resistance against this slump in the past five years.

In contrast, Apple, Samsung, LG Electronics or Philips, improved their stock prices more or less been steeply in the past few years. With a comprehensive design offensive the Japanese electronics manufacturer seems to control this negative trend struggling to regain market shares it has lost over the past years to more flexible and aggressive competitors.