BatchBook Blog
Archive for the “Blue By You” Category
Customer: Piers Shepperd
Company: Stagelink Limited (www.stagelink.com)
Tell Us A Little Bit About What Your Company Does And What Services You Provide:
Stagelink provides specialist technical design and production services to the live event industries. We have worked all over the world, helping teams from the Rolling Stones and U2 to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics and 2010 Vancouver Olympics. We provide specialist 3d technical design solutions using AutoCAD and Rhino, technical drawings, specifications and technical direction. Much of our work involves the coordination of lighting, sound, video, rigging and staging teams to ensure that everybody is heading in the right direction. Our real ‘buzz’ is bringing together hugely complex projects and teams to realize a creative dream.
How Did You Get Started:
After leaving school, I worked as a lighting technician on events all over the world, before moving onto the technical design of stage sets.
How Long Have You Been In Business And How Many Employees Do You Currently Have:
I have been involved in the technical side of live events for the past twenty years. We don’t have any full time employees. We use a network of specialists from around the world, who we call on depending on the exact requirements of our clients.
What Is Your Target Audience:
We seek out teams who are producing ‘mega events’ wherever they are in the world. The industry is relatively small, so we rely on our network of existing contacts.
How Does Your Company Stay Connected With Clients And Your Business Community:
We run a successful website which provide free listings of people and companies working in the events industry. We communicate regularly using email, and run document management systems to allow for the distribution of drawings and specifications.
Can You Offer Any Advice For Anyone Else Looking To Start Their Own Company:
Strive for excellence.
Is There Anything Else You Would Like To Add:
We connect to Batchbook using the API to automatically generate pdf contact sheets for every production, which are available for our clients to download from our website.
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Tags: Blue By You, small business
Company: Junebug Weddings (www.junebugweddings.com)
Tell Us A Little Bit About What Your Company Does And What Services You Provide:
Junebug Weddings is an online wedding magazine featuring the award winning wedding blog, What Junebug Loves, and a Plan Your Wedding Hotlist of the best wedding professionals in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest. Our invitation only network is expanding this year to include the world’s best wedding photographers.
How Did You Get Started:
Junebug Weddings is owned by Blair deLaubenfels, Christy Weber, and Kim Bamberg. After a decade of running successful photography businesses, we decided to share what we knew about the best products and people in the wedding industry with newly engaged couples worldwide. We’re thrilled to provide inspiration and advice to stylish couples everywhere.
How Long Have You Been In Business And How Many Employees Do You Currently Have:
We’ve been in business four years, and we have six employees.
What Is Your Target Audience:
Couples with mid to high-end budgets looking to plan their wedding with serious personal style.
How Does Your Company Stay Connected With Clients And Your Business Community:
Through numerous social networks and online marketing efforts including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Mailchimp. We’re dedicated to promoting our clients in print, online, and in person.
Can You Offer Any Advice For Anyone Else Looking To Start Their Own Company:
Write a business plan. Buy every URL that could be associated with your business. Define your brand and live by it.
Is There Anything Else You Would Like To Add:
Please see our website to see how we set Junebug Weddings apart from all other online blogs, magazines, and resources.
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Tags: Blue By You, small business
Name: Becky Shankle
Company: EcoModernism (www.eco-modernism.com)
Tell Us A Little Bit About What Your Company Does And What Services You Provide:
If modern kitchen design and sustainable materials had a baby, it would be EcoModernism. We design, assemble and install residential kitchens. We start with IKEA cabinet components – because they are extremely affordable – and finish them out with as many green materials as possible. Some of those materials include quartz countertops, bamboo shelving, cork flooring, recycled glass tile, and zero VOC paints. Green building materials haven’t become mainstream enough yet to get the price down. By using IKEA to save on the boxes, we’re able to shift the budget toward the more expensive finishes, and still come out cheaper than a fully custom kitchen. We design the kitchen to meet the client’s needs and goals, functionally and aesthetically. Once we lock in on that, we compile the order and help them place it.
The average IKEA kitchen comes in about 150 flat packed boxes. We offer an assembly and installation service, which starts with verifying the order’s completion when it gets there. Then we assemble it all, install it and help coordinate the countertop templating. We also dispose of all recyclable packing materials at a local facility.
How Did You Get Started?
I grew up in neighborhoods that had houses under construction, so the smell of wood and sound of saws and hammers has never gotten out of my blood. I started in commercial architectural design in 1986. Did that for 10 years, then moved into space planning and management for a dot com company. Got laid off from there in 2001 and have basically been on my own since. I find the project size & lifespan of residential design a lot more enjoyable than commercial projects. I’ll always be involved in design in some capacity.
How Long Have You Been In Business And How Many Employees Do You Currently Have?
I’ve been an independent designer since 2001, and have hung out my shingle as EcoModernism since January 2008. Currently, I’m the whole show. I have an installer who helps me with the actual installation of the boxes. I contract with him on a per project basis, and I partner with trades like electricians & plumbers the same way. I forged a positive relationship with the local IKEA store, & we both recognize the mutual benefits of our businesses. I’m approaching the critical mass point where I need to bring some help in – there’s only one of me, and I need to find a way financially to jump the chasm and develop a full time team.
Who Is Your Target Audience?
For individual single home projects, my target audience is people who love modern style – clean simple lines, no traditional trimwork like crown molding – and combining it with rougher design elements like wood or irregular surfaces, and indirect lighting. Most of the people who come to me already know they want IKEA. Saves us both time & pain trying to sell them something if they don’t already want it. For multi unit condo projects, my target audience is developers who want a cost effective, modern look with efficient space use, and are conscious about urban infill as an eco friendly solution to how we live.
How Does Your Company Stay Connected With Clients And Your Business Community?
Twitter, LinkedIn, mainly. I’ve done some presentations for Ignite and other local events. And networking with local contractors and like-minded small companies. Mostly I try to maintain a reputation as a quality service provider no matter what stage of service we’re in. I stress reliability, realistic budgeting & communication, & building a solution around the client, not the other way around. If I get that down, then my previous clients become my marketing engine for me.
Can You Offer Any Advice For Anyone Else Looking To Start Their Own Company?
Be driven by your own passion – don’t let the naysayers beat you down. Do the work in finding what people need/want. Then be disciplined about providing good service. Try to think relationally about things that are on the periphery of your business. For me, it’s issues like urban living, container or community gardening, and furniture. Have fun!
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Tags: Blue By You, small business
Name: Benjamin Christie
Company: Gourmet Ads www.gourmetads.com
Tell us a little bit about what your company does and what services you provide. Gourmet Ads is a global vertical advertising network with offices in America, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Gourmet Ads represents quality food, wine and beer websites throughout the world, aggregating and managing advertising across these highly relevant websites and blogs. We focus on delivering branding campaigns which drive sales and customer acquisition.
- How did you get started? We started originally in Australia, but demand from both advertisers and publishers in North America allowed us to start international operations. Now we have solid businesses in four countries (America, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) and growing rapidly into new countries.
How long have you been in business? We started in May 2007.
- Who is your target audience? Our clients vary greatly, in terms of the industries that they are from. We work with all sorts of food and wine companies, plus additionally we work with financial, automotive, travel companies and many more. The common goal for all our clients is they want to reach our unique online audience of female 27-55 years old who are commonly the the household grocery buyer.
How does your company stay connected with clients and your business community? We stay connected with clients mostly via email and phone. The ability for BatchBook to sit in between our email server tracking all incoming and outgoing email communications is essential for client communication. Being able to look at client cards and see previous discussions has been one of the reasons we switched to BatchBook from our previous CRM provider.
Any advice for anyone else looking to start their own company?
1. Be open to change with client demand. Many of our standard products now are far from what we originally developed. Many packages have been crafted because of clients who have wanted to do different things.
2. Invest in a website from day one, ensure it has a blog where you can talk about products, industry happening etc. It continues to be our greatest inbound avenue for client enquiry.
3. Have an outbound strategy for business development. Many companies sit back and wait for clients to knock on the door. You need to go and hunt them down and communicate with them often.
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Tags: batchbook, Blue By You, Community
Editor’s note: One of the things we’re most grateful for is our awesome and amazing customers. To celebrate, we’re kicking off a new monthly series where we profile some of these folks and their cool companies. If you are a BatchBook customer and you’d like to be featured, drop us a line – we’d love to share your story! — MRR
Name: Carolyn Gatto
Company: WeJustGotBack.com
Tell us a little bit about what your company does and what services you provide: WeJustGotBack.com is a family trip-planning resource. We provide in-depth reviews of family-friendly hotels and resorts, reader-contributed tips and recommendations, consumeristic travel advice, and the latest family travel deals. We also provide consulting and spokesperson services to businesses that want a bigger piece of the lucrative family-travel pie.
How did you get started? While trying to plan a trip for her family in 2005, our editor in chief, Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, identified a significant weakness in the quality of family travel info on the web. We knew we could use our journalistic backgrounds to create a site that would be genuinely helpful to parents who were planning family trips. We researched the market, established an action plan, assembled a top-notch team with complementary–but not duplicate–skills, and quickly moved forward. Within ten weeks of our launch, a writer from the New York Times called to interview us for an article. His description of our site, an authoritative voice on family trip planning, helped put us on the map.
How long have you been in business and how many employees do you currently have? We launched the site in February 2006 and currently have seven employees, two full-time and five part-time.
Who is your target audience? We target North American-based parents who travel with kids up to the age of 18. Right now our content covers only destinations in the US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean because that’s where the majority of our readers bring their families.
How does your company stay connected with clients and your business community? We use Twitter to raise awareness of our site and our brand and to meet potential readers and people in our industry. We’re also active on LinkedIn and use it to make announcements to the business community about our site’s evolution and our professional achievements.
What advice for anyone else looking to start their own company?
1) Be an evangelist about your business.
2) Perfect your elevator pitch.
3) Know your competition’s strengths and weaknesses. Learn how to succinctly articulate the differences between your business and theirs.
4) If something isn’t working, switch gears. Find another way to approach it.
5) Don’t overcomplicate anything. Just get it done.
6) Always be a person of your word. It will serve you well.
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Tags: small business super hero
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