Since I’ve been in Doha, a very important design issue has been made clear to me.
One design doesn’t fit all!
It didn’t hit me at first, mainly because I was using one of my ‘Billy’ purses but now I know that one design doesn’t suit all.
The Billy purse is a long slim zip around purse with just 6 credit card pockets and 2 long flat slip pockets for notes as well as plenty of space in the 2 sections either side of the centre zip, for further notes and receipts etc. The central zipped coin section is quite small, so good if you don’t want to carry too many coins.
It turns out that the Billy purse is the perfect purse for me in Doha because:
- I only have a few credit/debit cards with me so don’t need loads of space for all the usual (UK) store cards etc that I sometimes carry around too.
- The Qatari currency, the Riyal, comes mainly in note form. You hardly ever see a coin, so you don’t need lots of space for them.
- There are 6 different denominations of notes and you tend to collect a lot of the smaller ones, hence the need for lots of space in your wallet. In addition, the 500 Riyal note is really long – much longer than our British £20 and £50 notes. It doesn’t even fit in my (UK) best selling wallet.
My UK best seller
Over the last 10 years, it has become clear that my (UK) best selling ladies purse (wallet) is the Medium Purse Notecase. It has a deep section for notes, 6 main credit card pockets plus other hidden ones, lots of pockets for receipts and lots of space for coins. It is compact but holds a lot.
However, it is no good for anyone carrying US Dollars, Qatari Riyals (the large notes), Indian Rupees (the large notes) and Egyptian Pounds (the large notes). These notes are too long to fit in the note section without folding them!
Is it a bad design?
No, I don’t think it’s a bad design – it is after all, my best seller in the UK. It works in Europe too, where the Euro notes are really quite small and also in the UAE, these notes are all smaller than British Pounds.
This is just an illustration of how one design or one size doesn’t fit all. So now, I am inspired to look at new wallet designs – for different markets.
What would be the features you would most like to see in your wallet (purse)? I’d love to hear from you.
