Trade Factory

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Marvin Ruby, an online apparel store.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Om Lab?

I wanted them to customize my Shopify store. Shopify is great, but they don’t allow a lot of customization design-wise.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Om Lab redesigned our store. They fixed a lot of minor things to make the website look better. They changed the text sizes and spacing, and they got rid of random dividing lines on the Shopify template. They also changed the layouts of the pages, adding some scrolling features.

What is the team composition?

We work with a programmer, who made all of the changes, as well as three other teammates who review everything.

How did you come to work with Om Lab?

My friend had worked with them and spoke very highly of them, so I reached out. They work in week-long sprints, which allows us to keep adding things to the to-do list. That was very appealing. 

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent $1,300.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in November 2020, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

A lot of people have said that they really like the website. They say that it looks very professional, and not like a template, which is good. That’s what I hired them for.

How did Om Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

They're great. They set up a Slack channel for quick communication and a Trello board, which is how we track the progress of their work. When we first started, we used email and had a few video calls. It's all very clear. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Om Lab did what I wanted them to do and added a few suggestions. I didn't have to put together a whole presentation of what I wanted for them to give me a quote for that work; they just gave me their weekly rate and told me that they would get as much done as they possibly could in that time. 

They have a flat cost, which is really good. It was nice as a new business owner to know that the project wasn’t going to end up costing more and that they would just do as much as they possibly could within that time. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Play around with your website and figure out all the tweaks that you want and then communicate that immediately to Om Lab so that they can do as much work as possible.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Georgette Packaging. We’re a carbon-neutral packaging company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Om Lab?

They’re our developers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built out our website and have continued to do whatever maintenance we need since then.

What is the team composition?

We work with two of their team members, one developer and one project manager.

How did you come to work with Om Lab?

We were previously working with an agency that didn’t handle the work themselves. Our team figured out they were outsourcing to Om Lab, and they connected us with them. We started a direct engagement with Om Lab, and everything worked a lot better after that.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested a little under $5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement started in October 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve received more traffic and people love our website. They’re the best developers I’ve ever worked with, and that includes developers who are on my own team.

How did Om Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great communicators. We correspond through Skype and emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re cheery and responsive to feedback, which is rare. Their team is happy to fix things and receive criticism. They’re helpful and want to make us happy, which is unheard of to me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of a handwoven Moroccan rug company and we source directly from the artists. So for every rug, there is a person and a story behind it.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Om Lab?

I initially set up my site with a freelance developer. As I launched my second collection, I needed more advanced tracking and some customization for the site. I wanted a professional team and not a freelancer, so I hired Om Lab to upgrade my overall online store.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They are in charge of the implementation of advanced tracking on my website. They also helped design certain features of the website that I added and they continue to give design recommendations and I’ve used those recommendations.

What is the team composition?

In total, I’ve worked with six people. I was working with two employees at a time because I had multiple projects with them.

How did you come to work with Om Lab?

I was recommended to them by someone else in the states that I trust in building e-commerce stores.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost is less than $5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It started around March 2020 and the partnership is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Thanks to Om Lab’s integrations and updates, I’ve seen an increase in sales.

How did Om Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

We usually communicate over email. Their communication is great and they are very responsive. They are really professional.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was in a crunch at one point and I needed something to be fast-tracked. Rafael (CEO) stepped in and gave us a white-glove service which was very nice. He is very hands-on, but he also doesn’t micromanage his team. It was really nice that he stepped in and got everything done as quickly as I needed despite being a different timeline than what I initially asked for.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re good, otherwise I wouldn’t continue to be working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just communicate what you want. They are great partners and I would highly recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the e-commerce manager for Lucchese Bootmaker, a 137-year-old handmade leather boots and leather goods manufacturer. We’ve been a wholesale company for the large majority of our history, and we’ve started introducing our own retail stores. We launched our direct-to-consumer website about seven years ago. I’m in charge of all email marketing, website performance, and e-commerce sales channel.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Om Lab?

I came to the company about two and a half years ago, and Om Lab had been here for about a year already. We were trying to grow the e-commerce portion of our business significantly, and we didn’t have the bandwidth to do it with just one in-house developer.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We went to Om Lab to improve our website performance, optimize the checkout process, and perform general development. We did a number of projects with them over the course of our collaboration, including a full redesign of both the front- and backend of our fully custom Django Oscar Python e-commerce platform.

Om Lab had typically worked with WordPress sites previously, but they picked up the language right away. They made sure that the UX was fully optimized on both the customer and the administrative sides.

What is the team composition?

Rafael (CEO & Founder) was our main guy for high-level strategy, project proposals, and statements of work. We’d typically deal with two of their developers in particular, along with 1–2 QA testers and, depending on the scope of the project, another 1–2 developers. Team members rotated in and out.

How did you come to work with Om Lab?

We contracted them through a company called “Work in Progress”.

How much have you invested with them?

We had a contract for 150 hours per month at $65 per hour, and we used them for about 40 months. The total came out to around $390,000. We paid their invoices through Work in Progress, as Om Lab was subcontracted by them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Om Lab between April 2017–August 2020. The only reason we stopped is that we got a new IT director and, like any other retail business, had to cut costs during the pandemic. Right now, we’re working with our in-house developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We increased our revenue by about 75% after the first redesign. We also increased our Google SEO, driving a traffic increase of about 33%. We increased our conversion rate by about 33% as well by optimizing our shopping cart process. I don’t have metrics on site speed, but I know that it also improved drastically.

How did Om Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

The main developer we dealt with was phenomenal, and there was absolutely no drop-off when a team member was replaced. They were all professional, and the level of communication was insane. It was rare to get an answer to a question more than two hours after we asked it.

Om Lab worked really well with our in-house developer despite the language difference. We didn’t have many occasions where we were sitting in the same room but Om Lab did a stellar job with communication despite that. We had weekly calls through Google Meet and Zoom. Om Lab was very responsive, and we could get on a video chat with them pretty much anytime. The rest of the communication was via Slack. Google Meet was important because we had to see the other person’s screen a lot of the time. It was a lot better than a conference call.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They always went above and beyond what their call was in terms of customer service. All projects were done on time, and any complications that would lead to delays were relayed in a timely fashion so that we could adjust our expectations.

We’re in the process of migrating to a different e-commerce platform, and our CEO isn’t on the ground level with anything related to IT. He focused on the potential vendor’s ability to maintain the look, feel, and integrity of the website. I credit 80% of how our site works to Om Lab. Our internal developer has put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it as well, but it would be nothing like what it is today without Om Lab.

The concern I presented earlier in 2020 was about website accessibility. They hadn’t really heard about this topic, and they didn’t have any clients that were affected by this on a legal level, but they became experts on it seemingly overnight after I presented it to them. The same was true with SEO. We partnered with an SEO platform, and I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do it. I passed it off to Om Lab, and they picked it up really quickly, ran with it, and did a great job with it. They love to be challenged, and the sky’s the limit. Om Lab worked with us on anything we needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The thing they lack the most is being able to present their value. Our new IT director had an agenda to cut costs. I tried my best to communicate the value of Om Lab’s team, but the decision had already been made that they were a cost we could cut. Om Lab was an external partner, but the intimate knowledge they had of our company made them just as valuable as an internal resource that would cost exponentially more money.

The value that Om Lab brings is extremely high, but we weren’t able to express that well enough to our leadership and keep them on as a partner. We definitely miss them.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

There isn’t a ton of advice that I could give, other than this: try to get as much out of Om Lab as possible. They didn’t know the coding language before we started working together, but they picked it up really quickly. There were several things that we posed to them that they weren’t familiar with or hadn’t worked with before, and they did everything they could to figure them out. They did it in an extremely timely way, and they executed upon it flawlessly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the owner of a small company that produces and distributes a beginning reading curriculum.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Om Lab?

Om Lab was hired to set up better shipping options on our Shopify Store, solve problems with integration of inventory databases between Shopify and our shipping warehouse, and do help set up delivery of digital products in addition to our physical, paper books.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted all the issues mentioned above addressed.

SOLUTION

How did you select Om Lab?

I found them as a result of some online searches for service providers.

Describe the project in detail.

I had several meetings with Om Lab staff to discuss the project, as well as several brief e-mail exchanges.

What was the team composition?

I was in charge of communication to Om Lab from our end and spoke to the head of Om Lab and one of his engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

All the issues were resolved and in a very efficient time frame.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Excellent. Their communication was frequent and clear.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I very much appreciated how they recognized that my company was a bit unusual, and they wanted to know about it in some detail so that they could better understand the company's needs.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No