Boldare

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a B2B company providing a test management solution. We work almost purely inbound in terms of marketing efforts, so our website is essentially the first page a customer sees when looking for test management solutions. I am the marketing director of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Chilid?

Our initial site had been developed in 2010, and it was quite basic and aging rapidly. When we began the discussion about modernizing the site, we decided to outsource the work rather than trying to accomplish the whole thing with in-house resources. The priority then shifted to finding, vetting, and confirming the right partner for the job.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Chilid handled end-to-end development, but much of the collaboration focused on the design aspects of the newer site. We definitely had them build new features, too, which were specified at the outset. Everything was done from scratch, with the new site containing many elements that did not exist at all in the previous one.

We were quite pleased with Chilid's work, so we decided to contract them for an ongoing project designing our main application.

The team size varied between projects, but we typically worked with a scrum master, a web developer, and a designer from Chilid. We mainly communicated with the scrum master, but we also interacted openly with the rest of the team. They were very communicative, and it was the preferred way for us since we have an Agile approach on our end. Whenever there was a question, it was more efficient that we were asked directly in order to make sure that we were on the right track.

How did you come to work with Chilid?

We decided to outsource the work and started looking for companies. I found Chilid via Awwwards, which is an online competition for website design. One of the reasons we chose them was their prompt response time. I approached several companies, and compared to them, Chilid was very proactive and responsive.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Chilid in August 2015 and have an ongoing relationship. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The website has gained traction in terms of users, but there have been other marketing activities around it that have helped fulfill this, too. I have no doubt that Chilid's work helped.

How did Chilid perform from a project management standpoint?

For better or worse, Chilid is a very organized group. They're very structured in the way they work, which can be an advantage in getting precise estimates, but we are less organized as a customer. We've had to make some adjustments, but we have continued to work with Chilid, so we are happy.

What distinguishes Chilid from other providers?

The website was a unique project for us in terms of scope. Their team became all-in and proactive when working with us, which is not what many agencies do; instead, other groups often wait to be told what to do. This is a more professional view, but it is useful to receive input from the developer's end, which Chilid was very good at. During later stages, because we weren't using full-time people anymore, we saw a reduced focus on the project.

Is there anything Chilid could have improved or done differently?

I've had similar problems working with other agencies: when going under a certain threshold, the person working with us will become less focused on our project. With Chilid, we've seen both approaches, and we could tell the difference.

Do you have any recommendations for others considering working with Chilid?

Chilid is a very professional company. Going forward, I would look for the same qualifications from a website-building company. 

BACKGROUND

Please introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re one of the largest distributors of vehicular tires in Poland. We are in the lead of companies providing services for CFM. We also offer advanced online solutions for tire whole-sellers and workshops. I’m the IT manager, and I’m responsible for the planning, management, and coordination of our tech projects. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with XSolve?

XSolve was challenged to create a new version of our B2B application for tire distributors. Since the number of our application’s users has increased significantly, the older version of the application wasn’t fast or stable enough, and it wasn’t responsive for mobile accessibility. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

XSolve had to redevelop and redesign a whole new application from scratch. They assigned a business analyst to the project to help audit and document the existing solution. They created the necessary technical specifications and detailed the entire architecture. They also had to migrate data from the old app to the new one. The switch between these two app versions had to be made in one night, which was very complicated, but they did it.

How did you come to work with XSolve?

It was through a recommendation.

What was the size of your investment with them?

We’ve spent over $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have already finished the original project. Currently, they provide support and develop new features for our customers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our new app is 3x faster than the older version. We were able to increase the amount of data processing power and develop new end-user features. As a result, our revenues rose, and we doubled the number of paying members using our app.

How did XSolve perform from a project management standpoint?

We usually communicate by JIRA and Basecamp. We haven’t had any issues in this area.

What distinguishes XSolve from other providers?

XSolve is a young, professional group of people who are always ready to help. They are full of ideas, and they are always trying to understand your business. XSolve has significant experience in many areas of IT.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve or things you might do differently?

I think that they should have organized live meetings more often. Direct communication is better and faster. Sometimes, they had some issues with scheduling, and their young developers need more attention. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a government-owned organization, which empowers small and medium-sized businesses. In Saudi Arabia, there are many individuals selling products independently through Instagram and other online channels. They don't have e-commerce shops, though, and are not sophisticated enough to use platforms like Shopify and deal with online payments. The country's infrastructure for logistics is a bit different, so these stores need their own bespoke marketplace in which to operate. Also, cash-on-delivery is the predominant approach for local e-commerce. I am a product manager for the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with XSolve?

We needed to build an e-commerce platform in a very aggressive timeframe, so we looked online for solutions. While there are platforms like Magento and OpenCart available, we wanted to create a custom marketplace that would allow multiple sellers to open shops. Later challenges included building a data visualization site to support the platform. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We have worked with XSolve on two projects: our e-commerce platform and a visualization platform built in the same vein of supporting small and medium-sized businesses [SMBs].

We contacted over 30 different companies and met in person with three of them. XSolve was our choice to handle developing the e-commerce marketplace. They built an MVP in eight weeks, allowing us to meet a company deadline. It collects and visualizes datasets about markets, helping small businesses to make better decisions and form business plans. This project has been ongoing since October 2016.

XSolve assigned us a scrum team per project and did a great job at managing the development relationship. We delivered requirements, and XSolve sent us developer profiles, but we didn't take an active part in choosing the resources for our projects.

How did you come to work with XSolve?

Our team looked on Clutch and narrowed down the choices to 20 companies. They reached out to most of them; out of the ones who responded, the selection fell to four companies that had the most e-commerce experience and were the most willing to investigate the opportunity. XSolve was picked for this project, but we went with the other companies for different work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with XSolve almost a year ago. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

XSolve has helped us build two projects from scratch and deploy them to production on tight timelines. We continue to work with them to evolve the products.

The e-commerce project had a very aggressive deployment timeline. We had six weeks to deliver a barebones MVP, and XSolve was the only vendor who was willing to meet that deadline. They were successful, delivering our initial feature-set after a six-week period. Since I'm not the business owner of that project, I haven't kept track of its metrics.

How did XSolve perform from a project management standpoint?

We moved away from our previous developer and made the switch to XSolve. After this, our process improved tenfold. They have a much better process with proper scrums, code reviews, automated testing, and a higher engineering quality. XSolve was very successful in implementing this process compared to our previous vendor, who produced two more bugs for each one they fixed. XSolve has helped us learn about delivering user-stories properly. We had daily meetings with the developers of each project and worked through one-week sprints for the first eight weeks of our e-commerce project. We had a sprint review and planning session every week and switched to two-week intervals after that.

The data-visualization project had one-week sprints for its first 10 weeks, after which we moved to two-week sprints as well. The process was the same with daily meetings, online communication was sent via Slack, and user-stories through JIRA.

What distinguishes XSolve from other providers?

One great added benefit from using XSolve is the ability to use their sister design firm, Chilid. Our projects had a great boost in productivity once we enlisted a full-time designer to be a part of the development team. Our previous process had a separate design firm where we had to coordinate design requirements offline. Having a designer as a part of the scrum team enabled the developers to ask the designer for clarification when needed and allowed the designer to do QA on the developers' implementation of the design. A mockup can look beautiful initially, but the actual implementation can differ, so the QA step for the actual design implementation was very helpful in terms of quality and delivery time. Getting the work right the first time can save a lot of time and effort.

Is there anything XSolve could have improved or done differently?

I can't think of anything at this point. We've always had a constructive back-and-forth with XSolve. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

HolidayTaxis is a ground transportation travel technology company based in Brighton. We’ve made travel easier for 5 million customers in past 12 months, transferring them from the airport to their hotel. Our pre-booked transfer products include private taxis, limos, mini-buses, shared shuttles, helicopters, and water taxis.

Our headquarters is located in Brighton, which is a stone’s throw from the sea front and Brighton Pier. We also have offices in Berlin, Shanghai, and Colombia. We work with global airlines and travel brands including EasyJet, British Airways Holidays, Ctrip, Thomas Cook, Thai, and Singapore Airlines.

My role as head of IT delivery is to manage all aspects of technology utilization at the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XSolve?

We were rapidly growing and had requirements for key strategy projects that demanded a long-term development partner with specific skill sets that were missing in our current team. We needed to rebrand and launch a new website and companion mobile apps, we also had a key integration with a new partner that required a completely different technology to be implemented.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We traveled to Poland to meet with the team and discuss possible solutions. We then also had a core part of the XSolve team travel to Brighton on a couple of occasions to spend a week with us, learn about the business, and meet the internal development team.

XSolve provided both frontend and backend teams to enhance and supplement our project overflow. We broke down the projects and allocated aspects for the XSolve team to deliver.

We worked with XSolve over the course of a year, where we would feed in the requirements of each project. They would then manage the work, deliverables, and estimations.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

On a whole, the development team is professional and they deliver good quality products. We were extremely satisfied with the design and technical resources assigned to us. The team was keen for business contact and wanted to learn about our business/requirements and how they could improve their processes in order to help us.

How did XSolve perform from a project management standpoint?

We did try a couple of projects that were not as successful, in which they could not commit to deliverables and scope. I think XSolve is brilliant when working on new projects but we also have legacy systems that at times, they struggled to adjust to.

What did you find most impressive about XSolve?

Pawel and his brother really care about the company and the quality of the products that their teams deliver. I found Pawel to always be available for any concerns and addressed them quickly. XSolve has a wealth of knowledge within their company and will discuss problems that they may be having to find a suitable solution. They work really well collaboratively, and you need to have the time to give them the daily touch points required. XSolve can easily complement your own team, increase productivity, and improve missing skill sets. We really enjoyed working with them.

Are there any areas XSolve could improve?

I found all of the developers to be professional and courteous. I never had any issues when dealing with them directly and managing the scrums and scope directly. I would recommend having the right scrum master on your team, as this is key to success. Like any company of their size, XSolve has some amazing collaborative team members and some that are not.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an online yacht and boat charting company working with worldwide clients who want to sail themselves, or who want to hire a skipper. I am the marketing and communications manager of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Chilid Agency?

We are a startup company and needed to develop our website. We wanted an elegant and unique design that resonated with users, and we also needed a booking system to act as a marketplace where people could search through our offerings, make comparisons and then, eventually, pay for one of them directly through the site. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Chilid Agency strictly provided the design of our website. We have worked with two resources from Chilid Agency, who worked on our concepts and wireframes. Chilid Agency provided two versions of the site for us to choose from.

Chilid Agency also provided design and usability testing as a separate project, after our website was built. They provided two quality assurance testers who reviewed our bookings, e-mail notifications, and so on and so forth.

We've run a poster campaign in Switzerland, for which Chilid Agency provided design work, too. They've been heavily involved in most of our design efforts.

How did you come to work with Chilid Agency?

I looked online and found a page called Awwwards, which listed a number of agencies. I looked at their websites and previous work, contacted a few, and came into the top six. Some of those didn't even bother to get back to me, while others proved too expensive. We reached a top 2 and requested a design sample based on the information we'd given. The work done by Chilid Agency was exceptional, and it became clear that we would choose them, based on the good mix of price and services offered.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Chilid Agency in late March 2016. The work was finished by May. We have finished our poster campaign 2-weeks ago, and plan to go back to Chilid Agency whenever we'll need any design work. Chilid Agency is a creative group, and they have good response times.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The feedback from customers and everyone else we've shown the website to has been that the site is exceptional. This is also true for our poster campaign, which is currently live in Zürich.

We haven't been live for a long time, so there's no detailed data yet. Clients and partners have mainly cited the website as the reason for choosing us. They found it to be professional, beautiful, and elegant.

How did Chilid Agency perform from a project management standpoint?

Chilid Agency stuck to our budget and timeline. If anything took longer than anticipated, it was immediately communicated to us. Chilid Agency was always transparent. We used Basecamp as a project tracking tool, and we also had weekly Skype sessions during the design phase. Chilid Agency got back to us usually in less than a day, with answers to any questions.

What did you find most impressive about Chilid Agency?

Chilid Agency assigned a scrum master to our work, which isn't a very common practice in Europe yet. I found this to be very convenient.

Are there any areas Chilid Agency could improve?

Chilid Agency's designers are very busy with other projects, which led to them omitting some small details. It wasn't a big deal, though.

BACKGROUND

Please introduce your business and what you do.

BlaBlaCar is a trusted community marketplace that connects drivers with empty seats to passengers looking for a ride. More than 10 million people use BlaBlaCar every quarter creating an entirely new, people powered, transportation network.

With dedicated customer service, a state of the art web and mobile platform, and a fast-growing community of users, BlaBlaCar is making the traveling experience social, money-saving, and more efficient for millions of its members. BlaBlaCar is present in roughly 20 markets, but our home market is in France. Our 500+ employees are distributed in over 15 different offices across 15 countries, and then our aforementioned headquarters based in Paris.

I am one of our three heads of engineering, and together we lead nearly 100 professionals in two primary hubs: Paris and Warsaw. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XSolve?

One year ago, we faced a staffing challenge and were in need of a ready-to-deploy, full-stack engineering team to form a new unit within our all-new tribe-based re-organization. With a clear idea of what to work on, (simplifying our member's experience by smoothing out our long-distance carpooling reservation solution) we lacked engineers to contribute to the roadmap and develop the agreed-upon features. We decided we'd need to partner with an external partner capable of working in tandem with us. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Thanks to our reliable connections in the Polish tech community, we quickly identified XSolve as a promising and capable partner that we might able to hire. Their customer-focused, Agile approach inspired us, and we discovered that we shared a similar mindset. We started out with a 3–6-month collaboration, which has been extended to now almost one year in total. XSolve provided a full-stack and ready-to-go team with frontend, backend, and mobile talent, as well as a scrum master and a quality assurance specialist. This team got linked to our product owner and user experience designers to work on the tribe's roadmap. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What results can you share that would demonstrate the impact of this engagement?

Thanks to XSolve, we successfully managed the organizational transition to tribes. Their team allowed the Tribe Satisfy solution to actually function, and deliver on the agreed roadmap.

From the very beginning, we handled the team in Gliwice just like a team from BlaBlaCar, organizing regular visits in both directions and hooking them into all the habits and processes of our engineering team. We appreciated the enthusiasm and the eagerness to help of our remote team in Gliwice.

What did you find most impressive about their service?

Their mix of junior and senior people seems very appropriate. XSolve is strong in backend development processes.

What could they have improved?

On the other hand, their depth in mobile development expertise is not as high. Autonomy has been an issue, but the parallel increase of our own engineering team in Warsaw and thus permanently adapting processes surely didn't help their situation. Let me be clear: XSolve remains a strong, sympathetic partner that uniquely blended into our company spirit. I am happy to say that we're having a good time with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a modeling agency based in Italy. We provide models to different companies. I am the chief executive officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Chilid Agency?

We wanted to change the look of our website and obtain a more appropriate look for an Italian modeling agency.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Chilid Agency built a brand-new website for our company. It's mobile-responsive, and it allows models to register by themselves. Besides working on mobile devices, it was also important that we built a site which was simple to use.

How did you come to work with Chilid Agency?

We found Chilid Agency through the web. We considered a total of 10 developers and chose Chilid Agency because we saw them as the most professional option.

How much have you invested with Chilid Agency?

The total cost of Chilid Agency's services was around $27,000 [25,000 euros].

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Chilid Agency for 3-4 months. Our website was launched in May 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Because the Italian market isn't doing well at the moment, the website didn't have a huge impact on our business. Functionally, it has improved the way in which models work with us. They can easily subscribe and unsubscribe to the service, and we haven't received any complaints. The fact that they can easily use the website is the most important part for us.

How did Chilid Agency perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything went smoothly. There are a few cultural differences between Poland and Italy, so if anything went wrong, it was mostly because of our different approaches. We tend to be more flexible when there is an issue.

Chilid Agency provided us a number of project tracking platforms that we could easily access, which was great.

What did you find most impressive about Chilid Agency?

We didn't encounter any significant issues during the project, so I am satisfied.

Are there any areas Chilid Agency could improve?

Testing was focused more on the client side, and less on the agency functionalities, but the outcome was good nonetheless.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Polco is a validated polling tool for local governments to understand what their citizens want. The idea for Polco started a couple of years ago, but it's turned into a full-fledged product in the last six months. It's predominantly a web-based application but it's also available for mobile. We host agenda items and policies for local governments and then, they can share their ideas, policies and agenda items with their citizens and the citizens can vote on them. This is sort of a modern version of the old way of gauging citizens and of largely sending out post cards and town halls meetings.

What is your position?

I’m the chief operating officer [COO].

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Chilid Agency?

Polco is in an accelerator based in Texas over the summer. When it was halfway through, the frontend was very "hacky," it was very much incomplete. There was no sort of professional design on the project, so we knew that we would need to focus on getting a newer and better frontend when it came out of the accelerator. We found Chilid exclusively for that purpose, to handle the frontend development and User Interface [UI] design.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

They gave us several options. In the end, we kind of asked for everything to be built from scratch. They gave us the option to use WordPress, but we asked them to develop it using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

They asked us if we wanted them to implement the frontend too, which would have required a degree of interaction, but we have some developers in-house, so we actually opted to implement it ourselves.

We have done more work with them after that, twice actually. The first thing was when they finished a lot of their work early. We had some extra billable hours we had contracted for, and we opted to, not only use those but also to extend them. We’re exploring another contract with them now for a local design.

How did you come to work with Chilid Agency?

I did search for a number of design firms, both in the US and internationally. We had a few phone calls and we had a shortlist of four or five different firms, and then ended up going with Chilid.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We’ve spent between $10,000 and $20,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

It’s an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Outside the team, we have a number of advisors as most startups do. We presented in a few places. We launched about two weeks ago [Oct. 2015] and everybody was very impressed, so much so that we had customers show up on our preview and they didn’t want to use it until the new UI was in because they thought it was going to make such a difference for their citizens.

We presented the new UI in demo form at a showcase at Harvard and I think that at that point the backend functionality had barely been plugged in. We had people asking how we designed it. I was happy to see the response from people who had never looked at it before.

In terms of internal response, when we look for a designer we look for two things. One is the design presence, focus and style, and then the way that their process works. Having one of those things and not the other doesn’t really make anything easy so we needed both. From a team perspective, we liked their style and design but what’s been awesome is the process that they go through. There is an unbelievable amount of transparency and organization to the point that in every instance they could save time, they have. It’s been an easy process going through this and giving feedback. That’s been one of the best parts of working with them.

How did Chilid Agency perform from a project management standpoint?

Polco is on Slack so they hopped into our Slack. They also jumped into our GetHub, which was also really nice. They used Base Camp, too. They would update us daily. We could follow on that. The fourth was their internal project management - JIRA. They gave us access to that as well. It wasn’t necessary, but a couple times I was curious with what their timelines were.

What distinguishes Chilid Agency from other providers?

We’ve only explored a couple other firms so my sample for comparison is small. Nevertheless, something that stood out was the general conscientiousness. I really got the sense that they were not in any way trying to slow their hourly rate. In fact, we had so much at the end that we were able to add functionality. They seemed to be thinking of things we hadn’t thought of before, which we appreciated. It’s been a good experience.

Is there anything Chilid Agency could have improved or done differently?

I can’t think of anything. It’s been awesome.

Do you have any tips or advice for future clients of theirs?

The only thing I can think of is having something like Slack. We use it anyway, but they’ve been very responsive in that channel. If a future client doesn’t have something that would allow them to communicate quickly and easily with Chilid, then that could be an option because they will use it. We learned more about project management from Chilid than we thought we were going to.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a startup and we are trying to develop an online community for snowboarders and skiers with a focus on sharing video. We're really trying to develop a technology to make it simpler and easier to edit and share that video with friends, family, etc. We started last summer and we launched our website in January of 2015 as a beta, mainly just to get the website up to start testing it out and playing with it.

At that point in time, a different development company that is now disbanded had built it. Once summer had come around, we were ready to make some updates and make some improvements to the sites, and that's when we approached XSolve based on a recommendation from a business contact.

What is your position?

I’m a co-founder of the startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with XSolve?

We needed a long-term development partner with a number of skill sets. We needed a lot of custom development completed; mostly feature addition, bug fixes, configurations, testing and things like that. There was no way we could do any of it ourselves since we aren’t tech guys.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

XSolve did a lot. They did a whole site audit. I don't have a technical background nor do any of my partners so we were definitely lacking in any kind of IT expertise. Once we got involved with XSolve, we quickly realized that the previous guys we were working with weren’t actually that good. Some of our code was written in PHP, but it was written in an older version. As a result, we couldn’t implement all of the security updates we needed. These are some of the things that XSolve pointed out to us right away.

They were able to show us via video conference some of the defects in the code and error checking. Also, they were able to show us that our website was completely wide open for security breaches through some links that we thought were the admin panel. They just told us, "Hey look, everybody can log right in." It was a real surprise. They did a lot of the security enhancement fixes and a lot of streamlining of the code, but particularly we wanted to have them recommend ways to share these videos on other social media. With some of the updates, you can share content on Facebook and Twitter. We also updated how we upload videos, because a lot of our users already have videos up on YouTube. We wanted them to be able to upload any video that was there via direct URL to our site. Those were two of the big updates that we wanted to get done and they accomplished it easily.

This has been the extent so far. We plan on working with them more with some future projects. We've just taken it step-by-step.

In terms of our team, there is one or two of them that are directly involved, and then the team itself is comprised of three or four people that we would meet with. They aren’t all involved with custom coding. Two of them were doing the coding, and then the other guys were there with expertise or to help facilitate, which is nice because you get them in the room talking about the things that you want to do. They ask you some good questions about how we solve functionality and I feel like that it kind of helps us make it through the process.

How did you come to work with XSolve?

It was through a recommendation.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We’ve spent over $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They most recent work was a couple weeks ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I know that members of my team think that things are running a lot smoother. It's a lot quicker to load, processing is fast, and it just seems like everything is running better after the coding enhancements. The way that the Facebook and Twitter sharing tools came out was exactly as we had envisioned, too. Everyone was ecstatic about it once that was up and running.

We had no problem with timeline or budget. We had a fixed-price contract. There were never any issues. I know they probably ended up spending a little more time on it than they were expecting. There’s also that point where we have to talk about other issues that they identified and they cleaned up. They just took care of it for us.

Do you have advice for future clients?

I think they did a great job. There were some hurdles in timing because they're in Poland and we’re in New York, but they accommodated that. They're very responsive and there were times when we would not be able to respond to them immediately just because of the time difference. My partners and I, we all have other full-time jobs. This is kind of a side project for us and there were points in which we were in a bottleneck in getting information flowing to them. They never made us feel like we were a burden for taking too long.

They're very competent, which is the most you can ask for in this type of situation. We're a small company. We're only spending somewhere in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 with them this year. I can't imagine we're anything big. Yet I felt like they treat us really well and as far as I could tell we were a big client to them and they treated us like so. I'm happy that they're out there. I'm happy they want to work with us because we're small, we're going to do some work now and then stop, and then want to do some more of the work later on, and they don't seem to mind that. They seem like a great, great fit if you're that type of business.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're Cole & Mason. We were launched in 1919. Our company shares a passion for great flavor with food lovers all around the world. Innovation and style have been at the heart of the brand, launching the first acrylic mill and subsequently the award-winning Precision Grind mechanism. More recently, Cole & Mason have entered the specialty mills market as well as a full range of spice racks and oil and vinegar dispensers. Cole & Mason has a wide knowledge base on the art of seasoning, which we wanted to impart to the consumer in an engaging and innovative way.

What is your position?

I am the global marketing controller.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Chilid Agency?

The project was to create a microsite to provide information to our consumers on the art of seasoning as well as facilitate recipes and product information. The site would then link to the Cole & Mason e-commerce site to complete any path to purchase. We needed development of that microsite that was pretty much an adoption of our content.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They did the design and development part of the project for the microsite.

How did you come to work with Chilid Agency?

I worked with them on a previous project with an alternative company.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The project was less than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project has been delivered. I don't remember when we started work on the project. We had been talking about it for a while, but I can't remember when we actually pushed the button on it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We're satisfied with the results. Everyone who has used it has been very complimentary about it. Everyone's loved the style of it, and how it fits into our current collateral as well. It's kind of seamless in terms of what we're trying to achieve. 

How did Chilid Agency perform from a project management standpoint?

Throughout the process, the Chilid Agency has been really engaged with the project, always mindful of deadlines and has taken ownership of the critical path. The project was managed carefully, with all team members involved – it was fluid and seamless from start to finish. 

They have performed well – absolutely. My experience with those guys is that they always overperform. They give you what you're asking for, and then some.

We have been delighted with the result, it is not just visually on brand and compliments our other materials, but it is also very user friendly. Both our team and customers have been impressed with the quality of design and the attention to detail.

What distinguishes Chilid Agency from other providers?

It was probably the fact that they were completely transparent. You get a real sense of the fact that they are very transparent. Whereas with other agencies, they are all talk but actually don't deliver, and there's something being hidden. I also found that they're the only agency that actually delivered something on time, especially in the digital world. Everybody else I've used has been late, and these guys haven't at all.

I have worked with Chilid on a number of projects, each one has surpassed my expectations not only in the beautiful design work, but also with how the project is run, how clear the steps are and the process to follow. The team are immensely helpful, thoroughly professional and deliver fantastic results.

Is there anything Chilid Agency could have improved or done differently?

Not at all. They are as good as you can get, I think.