PA Consulting welcomes award-winning product design and innovation agency Design Partners

PA Consulting (PA), the global innovation and transformation consultancy that’s bringing ingenuity to life, announced today that the team from Design Partners, an award-winning product design and innovation agency, has joined PA. 

At a time when the speed and quality of innovation is critical to business success, Design Partners will complement and enhance PA’s strategy and design capabilities as part of its market leading end-to-end innovation offering.  

Inspired design and designers are at the heart of PA’s business. With over 75 years of design heritage encompassing world-firsts and iconic products, PA’s teams have shaped the world of today and are creating the world of tomorrow. PA has designed innovations including the UK’s first nationwide electric vehicle chargepoint for UK government, a revolutionary medical device to improve patient end-of-life comfort for Bearpac Medical and an inclusive line of beauty tools for Guide Beauty to make it easier for anyone to create any beauty look, regardless of their physical condition.   

For over 35 years, Design Partners has served an international client base across the consumer, technology and healthcare sectors. Its unique blend of strategic consulting and product design capabilities enable it to provide a full suite offering, from Advanced Thinking to Innovation Delivered. 

Design Partners brings specialist expertise in product strategy, design for sustainability, wearable technology, human interaction devices, and medical device design. It has designed landmark products for some of the world’s most respected brands including Logitech, Cosmed, Cricut, Beyerdynamic, Jameson and Honeywell. Design Partners’s work has been recognised by over 100 industry awards in the last five years, including Good Design, RedDot Best of the Best, IF award and IDSA Gold. Their Viscero ECG Vest design was also named on Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards 2022.

Ken Toombs, CEO at PA Consulting, said: “We are so pleased to welcome Design Partners' multidisciplinary team of designers and engineers to PA Consulting. Their focus on integrity, exceptional people, excellence, and innovation complements PA’s own values. Design Partners' ethos of being able to create the future, as opposed to simply imagining it, directly aligns to our mission of building a positive human future. This partnership will extend our design capabilities, further enhancing our ability to deliver the most ingenious products, solutions and experiences for our clients.” 

Trevor O’Reilly, CEO of Design Partners added: “We are delighted that PA and Design Partners are coming together. PA’s experience in amplifying design with science and engineering, conceiving, and delivering ingenious new products and services will magnify our capabilities. Together we can provide our clients with an exceptional full suite design and innovation offering.” 

Brian Stephens, Founder and Non-Executive Chairman of Design Partners added: “As one of two original founders of Design Partners over 35 years ago, I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved to date. Now is the time for the team to look to the decades ahead and write their own future. I am delighted that in PA we have found a partner that is so clearly aligned with what we care about and worked hard to achieve. I am really excited for the opportunities this will bring for the team and for our clients.” 

Ahead of welcoming Design Partners, PA has welcomed other award-winning, globally recognised teams to grow its design capabilities.

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.