Branding, Graphic & Web Design for Luxury Skincare Company
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Branding E-Commerce Development Graphic Design
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Shopify Brand strategy Corporate identity
- $50,000 to $199,999
- Nov. 2024 - Sep. 2026
- Quality
- 2.0
- Schedule
- 2.0
- Cost
- 2.0
- Willing to Refer
- 2.5
“My experience with this agency has been extremely disappointing.”
- Beauty
- Canada
- 11-50 Employees
- Online Review
League Design Agency provided branding, graphic and web design, market analysis, and product manufacturing support for a luxury skincare company.
The client was disappointed with League Design Agency's work and felt they lacked professionalism. The client had to micromanage the agency due to ineffective project management and inconsistent communication. The client also questioned the agency's quality control and internal review process.
The client submitted this review online.
BACKGROUND
Please describe your company and position.
I am the CEO of Maison Des Elites
Describe what your company does in a single sentence.
luxury skincare
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What specific goals or objectives did you hire League Design Agency to accomplish?
- web and design
SOLUTION
How did you find League Design Agency?
Other
Why did you select League Design Agency over others?
High ratings
How many teammates from League Design Agency were assigned to this project?
Other
Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.
- branding
- brand guideline
- brand web
- graphi design
- product design
- market analysis
- product manufacturing support
- brand moodboard
- web design
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
luxury skincare startup project
Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?
My experience with this agency has been extremely disappointing, especially considering that I invested approximately $50,000 into this engagement. At that price point, I expected a professional agency relationship: strong communication, experienced project management, attention to detail, proactive problem solving, and a team capable of taking ownership of the work. Unfortunately, my experience has been almost the opposite. The biggest issue is that I have had to micromanage an agency that I am paying to manage and execute the project. I did not hire an agency so that I could become its project manager, art director, quality-control department, and designer. Yet throughout this engagement, I have repeatedly found myself doing exactly that. I have had to review work at an extremely granular level, point out spacing problems, alignment issues, inconsistencies, incorrect positioning, typography problems, differences between desktop and mobile, and situations where previously established design decisions were simply not being followed.
This is not what I consider normal client feedback. Normal feedback is discussing creative direction, refining concepts, or making strategic decisions together. What I experienced was having to repeatedly explain execution details that a professional digital agency should be capable of managing internally. At approximately $50,000, I should not need to micromanage basic execution. Communication has also been one of the weakest aspects of the engagement. In my experience, communication has lacked the consistency, clarity, responsiveness, and organization that I would expect from a professional agency managing a project of this size. Too often, I have felt responsible for keeping things moving, clarifying what should already have been understood, repeating previous instructions, and making sure feedback was actually reflected in subsequent work. That creates another problem: the client begins spending an unreasonable amount of time managing the agency. An agency is supposed to remove operational burden from the client. In my case, working with the agency often created additional work for me. There were periods where I felt that unless I personally inspected every detail, something would be overlooked. That completely defeats the purpose of paying a professional team. The lack of effective internal quality control has been particularly frustrating. There were numerous occasions where I questioned how certain work had reached me without someone internally reviewing it first. When there is an established desktop design, approved visual language, defined spacing, typography, motifs, and page structure, I should not need to continuously remind a professional team to maintain those standards.
Once something has been corrected, I also expect the lesson from that correction to carry across the project. Instead, I frequently found myself giving similar categories of feedback again. That is exhausting as a client. If I explain how spacing should work on one section, I should not have to individually supervise spacing across every subsequent section. If we establish how desktop translates into mobile, that principle should be understood and applied to other pages. If a visual motif has an established behavior, I should not need to repeatedly explain how it should be handled. A professional agency should build institutional knowledge as the project develops. I did not consistently experience that. There is also a major difference between being "detail-oriented" as a client and being forced to micromanage because the work is not being sufficiently reviewed before delivery. I am absolutely detail-oriented. Maison des Elites is a luxury brand, and details matter enormously to us. But that does not excuse an agency from doing its own QA. Luxury design requires precision. Typography, spacing, hierarchy, interaction, movement, alignment, mobile responsiveness, and consistency are not optional finishing touches. They are fundamental parts of the design. I have spent an enormous amount of my own time inside the project correcting and refining work. In several instances, I have effectively had to develop the solution myself and then communicate exactly how I wanted the agency to execute it.
At that point, I have to question what I am paying the agency for. If the client is identifying the problem, developing the solution, explaining the solution, reviewing its implementation, finding additional problems, and then supervising another round of corrections, the division of responsibility is fundamentally wrong. For a project costing approximately $50,000, I expected senior-level thinking and execution. I expected the team to challenge themselves before presenting work to me.
I expected somebody internally to ask: Does this match the approved direction? Is the spacing correct? Is the typography consistent? Does the mobile version properly reflect desktop? Were the client's previous comments incorporated? Does this actually feel finished? Instead, too many of those questions have effectively been left for me to answer. Project management has consequently felt inadequate for the scale and cost of the engagement. Good project management is not simply scheduling meetings or sending messages. It means understanding what has been requested, documenting decisions, ensuring feedback reaches the appropriate people, checking that deliverables satisfy those requirements, identifying problems proactively, and communicating clearly with the client.
The client should not have to repeatedly police the process. Communication has compounded these frustrations. When you are already unhappy with execution, poor or inconsistent communication makes the experience significantly worse. I should not need to chase clarity or repeatedly explain decisions that have already been discussed. For $50,000, professionalism should be visible throughout the entire client experience—not only in a proposal or sales presentation. It should be visible in communication. It should be visible in project management. It should be visible in attention to detail.
It should be visible in how feedback is documented. It should be visible in the quality of work presented to the client. And most importantly, it should be visible in accountability when something is not working. Another frustration is the amount of my own time this project has consumed. The real cost of an agency engagement is not simply the invoice. There is also the client's time. When I am spending hours reviewing, correcting, redesigning, documenting issues, and explaining implementation details, that represents a significant additional cost to my business. I hired an agency specifically because I wanted experienced professionals to take responsibility for this work.
Instead, I have often felt like I hired people who still required me to supervise the work at an extremely granular level. That is unacceptable to me at this price point. I also want to distinguish between demanding high standards and expecting perfection. I never expected every first draft to be perfect. Creative projects involve iteration. I am completely comfortable providing feedback and collaborating. The problem is the volume and nature of the intervention required. When the founder is repeatedly fixing the agency's work, something has gone wrong with the relationship.
When the founder has to micromanage execution, something has gone wrong. When established feedback needs to be repeated, something has gone wrong. When the client feels responsible for quality control despite paying approximately $50,000 for professional services, something has gone wrong. This experience has significantly reduced my confidence in the agency. At this stage, I believe the agency needs to conduct a serious internal review of the entire project rather than simply continuing to submit invoices as though everything has proceeded normally. I have made it clear that I expect the work to be reviewed against the extensive feedback and corrections already provided.
I do not believe it is reasonable to expect a client to continue paying invoices without addressing substantial concerns regarding the quality and management of the work already delivered. The agency should review what was originally submitted, what I subsequently had to correct, how much direction was required from me, what feedback had to be repeated, and whether the level of service actually corresponds with what a client should reasonably expect from an approximately $50,000 engagement. My advice to prospective clients would be to document everything.
Keep records of feedback. Keep versions of deliverables. Track what you requested, what was delivered, what had to be corrected, and how often the same problems occur. Do not assume that because you hired an agency at a substantial price point that you will necessarily receive a hands-off experience. In my case, this has been anything but hands-off. I have had to be deeply involved in virtually every aspect of the work to protect the standard of my brand.
For me, the fundamental question is simple: if I am paying approximately $50,000 for professional agency services, why am I having to micromanage the professionals? I expected expertise. I expected ownership. I expected communication. I expected organization. I expected attention to detail. I expected the agency to reduce my workload. Instead, I experienced poor communication, excessive dependence on my direction, repeated corrections, insufficient quality control, and an extraordinary amount of micromanagement.
The most frustrating part is that I can see how much of this could have been avoided with stronger leadership, better communication, better internal review, and greater ownership of the work. A client paying this level of fees should not have to fight to get the details right. They should not have to repeatedly explain established design decisions. They should not have to personally catch problems before launch. And they certainly should not feel as though managing the agency has become another full-time responsibility. Unfortunately, that is how this engagement has felt to me.
What was your primary form of communication with League Design Agency?
- Virtual Meeting
- Email or Messaging App
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
None.
Are there any areas for improvement or something League Design Agency could have done differently?
After investing approximately $50,000, I expected a professional partner who would take our vision and help elevate it. Instead, I have spent far too much of this project supervising, correcting, and managing the people I hired to make my workload lighter. That has been the most disappointing part of the entire experience.
RATINGS
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Quality
2.0Service & Deliverables
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Schedule
2.0On time / deadlines
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Cost
2.0Value / within estimates
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Willing to Refer
2.5NPS
