Excela formerly Excela Creative

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

The company is a fashion accessories lifestyle brand that I founded about four years ago. We design, manufacture, and then sell primarily online, ladies' accessories like handbags, jewelry, and a certain amount of home goods.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I'm the founder and pretty much the sole manager of the company. I manage the day to day.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Excela Creative?

Traditional marketing is very expensive, and the business model for my brand was to speak more directly to the consumers. So, I was looking for a digital agency that could be a little more nimble, a little more quickly adaptive, and understand social media and speak in that sort of authorial, but also authentic voice directly to the audience.

I think they have a good blend. They don't necessarily beat you over the head with traditional methods. They're certainly willing to work with if you have something that's a little bit out of the box, if you have an interesting idea of how to target consumers. I really needed a lot of hand holding, and also very much out-of-the-box thinkers. I come from a number of years in the advertising world myself, and the digital space, and I know that the traditional kind of waterfall design and development method isn't a great one for a small, nimble brand like myself.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

They've really been involved in all stages of the development of the brand, from the original brand identity through marketing campaigns, website, even creating the digital assets in regards to photography and post-production of those images, and some copywriting. They've done strictly digital marketing for me.

What was your process for selecting Excela Creative?

I believe it was a referral.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative?

Maybe $5,000 a month. The cost is lower overall because they get a percentage for the flash sale component of their work. So, they see a higher benefit when the sales are particularly strong.

When was the project completed?

We started working together about three years ago, and the relationship is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

One of the strengths in working with Excela is that they're willing to think outside the box and help me through that analysis stage. I tend to look at business unconventionally, and they're willing to follow me on these flights of fancy, whether it's in the formation of a campaign or coming up with hypotheses about why things work, and then testing whether those hypotheses were correct.

Do you have any statistics or metrics on the project?

Most of that is fairly privileged, and I can't share a lot. I will say that in some of the more recent email marketing campaigns, now that we have built up a sizable audience, we're starting to really engage in some deep, direct response complains. We're seeing some conversion rates in those direct campaigns that are much higher than what I'm used to. A recent campaign, where we created a sales message that was in response to a rain check from six months before, we saw more than a 50 percent open rate and click-through the campaign page, which I've never seen before. That was phenomenal.

Is there anything unique or special about Excela Creative that really makes them stand out?

They are closer to the work – nothing is outsourced. They don't use a team of contractors. For the most part, everyone is an in-house resource. There's very few new hands on deck, so you should expect to have a fairly seasoned crew working with you. Excela Creative has  the ability and willingness to try new things, to stay on top of this very fast-moving social media world, where the rules get rewritten constantly. We are in the middle of a huge shift away from traditional distribution platforms, and in favor of influencers and taste makers. I think they are looking at that very closely, and constantly trying new things, rather than productizing, packaging up something that worked for a client three to five years ago, and just reselling that cookie-cutter style repeatedly.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

Resources are always a challenge because they are a bit of a small, nimble staff. I would like to have limitless art resources, technical resources. I think what they could improve on is really just the ability to staff more weekend hours, longer hours, and things like that.

What advice would you give a future client of theirs?

I don't think this is respective to Excela, but you always get out of it what you bring to it. Although they are more than capable and happy to brainstorm with you, and bring ideas to you that refine what you already had, or take it in directions you weren't expecting, I think every client really needs to sit down and formulate a realistic plan for how they're going to achieve their goals. The more you can solidify and codify that, and make it real prior to sitting down, you're gain that in multiples when you actually go into design, production, and execution.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

It's an accessories company.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Excela Creative?

I just had a very old and outdated website, and needed to update it. I started it when I started the line about eight or nine years ago, so I needed a new website. In the last year or two, I decided that it's really time for me to get into the new world and functionality, and that's when they started with me.

Please describe the scope of their work.

They did everything, from start to finish, except uploading the actual products, which I did myself. They built the whole platform, they customized it, and they designed it. It's e-commerce, and it has a great functioning back-end. I was able to upload all my own products myself, which was very imperative to me. I have new products constantly, and I don't want to call someone or pay someone to be uploading products every month.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Excela Creative?

I don't even remember how exactly I found them. I think just referrals. I've actually known them for quite a few years, so I don't know exactly how we came into contact with each other, but they've always been great to work with, so I wanted them to do my website.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative?

No. We haven't gotten there yet, we're still working on stuff.

When was the project completed?

We just launched it this week.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We literally just launched it two days ago, so I don't have feedback from anyone external yet. For feedback from my employees and me. They were great to work with and on top of things. If I made a request, if I needed something customized, it was done within a week. They always answered my questions right away. If something couldn't be done, they'd let me know. If it could be done, they said they would work on it. A lot of great communication skills.

They're very open to customization and working with different brands on what they need specifically for their site, which is great. I have been doing this a long time, and there are certain things that need to be implemented that they might not have had in their repertoire before because another client might not need it. It was great because they got everything done that I needed to get done. The site looks beautiful, it works really well, and it's got a great back-end, which was one of my number one priorities – to have something that was very easy to update myself and to have my employees be able to update themselves.

Is there anything unique or special about Excela Creative that really makes them stand out?

I honestly haven't really worked with any other agencies, but what I like about them is they have a lot of different people doing different things. They have a lot of different specialties: they do email blasts, SEO [search engine optimization], social media – all sorts of different things. If you're looking for someone to take over what you're doing completely, they have everything in house. They don't have to subcontract, which I think is really helpful. They're all in the same office, and I think that's a big plus to their company.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

No, I don't think so. I'm pretty happy.

What advice would you give a future client of theirs?

Just the same advice I would give to someone working with any company to build a website. Just know what you want before you go in there. If you go in and you have no idea what you want and what you're doing, it's going to be more difficult for them to give you what you want. You have to have an idea of what you need in the back-end, how you want it to look. I pulled a bunch of different sites with different homepages that I liked, and we kind of meshed them all into one. Do research before you start. Don't come in just completely clean slate. I would look at other sites to see what you like before you start building an entire website on your own.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

I work for an upscale furniture store, and it's also a sort of collective. I'm just starting, and I'll be bringing in artists and designers to work in the space as well.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I'm the manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Excela Creative?

I'm pretty new to the e-commerce side. I come from more of an artistic design standpoint, so I didn't really know where to start, to be honest. We needed the site designed within some particular guidelines, along with e-commerce capability.

Please describe the scope of their work.

They were involved with everything from start to finish, design-wise, and development of the website. I provided direction, sort of where I needed to go with it and provided all the images. I had originally designed a home page or a landing page, and my ideas came out pretty bad. Their designer actually made something really gorgeous and high end. A lot of my furniture is high end, so I didn't really know how to make my website reflect that. Their designers helped make a really lovely high-end landing page. I just went into the back-end of their site and filled up my store. They worked with me a lot on tweaking things because I had a pretty strange way that I wanted the site structured, so we had some fiddling around to do with the shopping side.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Excela Creative?

They were referred to me through a designer that I had worked with.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative?

That part, I am a little bit out of the loop on. Between the owner of the business and the accountant, I haven't had to deal with that.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We've been collaborating since the beginning of the year, and it remains ongoing. The site is beautiful, and it definitely changed the whole presentation. I've been filling it up and working on it as an e-commerce platform. Next will be real marketing developments, but the site is just gorgeous and everyone is impressed with it.

Do you have any stats or metrics on the project?

We haven't measured metric improvements yet. Overall, we've been very satisfied with the results.

Is there anything unique or special about Excela Creative that really makes them stand out?

It was pretty personal. I had some pretty strange requests for how I wanted the site to be set up. They helped me out with some photography, and then I provided my own. We had a lot of wiggling and figuring it out – thinking on our feet. Their liaisons were really helpful with helping me figure out how to structure my e-commerce the way that I wanted to. It was really personable and customizable.

I'm not a techie person, and I'm easily frustrated by this stuff, but their back-end was really nice. I could create different account levels to access different information and I was really excited about that. Every time I had a request, they were really good about getting back to me about how they could make it possible. They've definitely been very accommodating.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

I don't know. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

What advice would you give a future client of theirs?

I was doing a lot of scrambling because I'm new to this part. I would say it's really helpful to have all of your assets in order. It's not totally necessary because they're pretty easy to work with and telling you what you need to fill out. It's so customizable that it's all up to you – what you provide. I was scheduling really last-minute photo shoots and stuff like that, just to try to get everything in order, but it's pretty smooth sailing.