Epic Sofia

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the human rights lawyer at LGBT DEYSTVIE, an LGBT-oriented NGO. Our work is mainly focused on providing pro-bono legal support to LGBTQIA people in Bulgaria.  

What challenge were you trying to address with Epic Sofia?

We needed help creating our website and building our social media, including developing and executing social campaigns.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Epic Sofia developed our website. Next, they developed an online platform for legal services for easy communication between beneficiaries, warriors, and organizations. All of this was communicated through our social media.

Their team also handles all of our social media marketing. They help with our PR strategy, communications, and brand vision.

What is the team composition?

We work with four members of their team. There are two people connected to social media and two people connected to developing the website.

How did you come to work with Epic Sofia?

We met at an event organized by the organization. We got to know each other and presented our work to one another. In the beginning, we started with small projects and we loved their work. We saw a lot of potential so we continued working with Epic Sofia.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2018 and it's ongoing.

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

They’re true professionals. They put their heart and mind into their work. They try to balance between advertising and working with people in trying to impact the community.

How did Epic Sofia perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management skills are good. They have one person managing the project and he’s doing a good job. We mainly use email to communicate, but we also formed a Facebook Group if something needs to be done urgently.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We tried to work with other providers in the past but no one could understand exactly what we do. Epic Sofia doesn’t have a legal background but they managed to understand the legal terms and all the legal work, aims, and goals that we had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have been a bigger group of people but it’s difficult times nowadays. Epic Sofia quite good even though there are only a few of them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go ahead and work with them. They can provide good work and good results.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the co-founder of Camino Ultra, a running events company based in London. We organize ultramarathons and running events that are 50 kilometers or longer in distance.

What challenge were you trying to address with Epic Sofia?

We had built our own website through Google but it was unsecure, hard to navigate, and poorly designed, as we are not UX designers. We were unable to have clarity on our audience — who was accessing the website and at what point they dropped off. 

Other than wanting to have a good website, we also didn’t know exactly what we wanted or how different elements would hang together. We knew the different platforms for hosting websites but couldn’t tell which could be best for us. We contacted Epic Sofia to help us with the basics since we are not experts in this domain. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The main thing, in the beginning, was to get our heads around which platform to use. We chose between a few of the most obvious ones, like Squarespace and Wix. Epic Sofia recommended that we take a look at the latter since we would be able to use a language that we understood and that was most useful for us. We were willing to put in the effort to give the website a degree of complexity, and with Wix, we could do something a bit more interesting, so we agreed to go with that platform.

Our second major milestone was negotiating with Epic Sofia in terms of doing all the branding. We already had a certain degree of branding so the team agreed to keep some parts of it and modify others, as this could also help the cost estimate. 

We didn’t pay for full branding, but their team proactively sent us a document containing all the ideas for the website — logos, color palettes, and a design revolving around a narrative that evoked the feeling of running through woodlands. We planned to use their designs across our social media pages as well, so we talked about how to keep them consistent throughout or if they needed to be resized. 

After taking time to look at the designs, we started getting into a conversation about adding blog posts and videos to the website. We talked about creating a section to promote what we do and setting up a mechanism for affiliate schemes. They came back to me with another sheet of ideas and, later on, a first look at the website.

What is the team composition?

Most of the designs were from Miro (Partner & Digital Creative) but we established our relationship with Elena (Co-Founder). She was the one who would show us and walk us through the designs. 

How much have you invested with them?

The initial quote was about €3,000 (approximately $4,000 USD) but we ended up in the €2,000–€2,500 (approximately $2,000–$3,000 USD) mark.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first started speaking at the end of November 2020, and the site went live sometime during the second or third week of January 2021. 

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

We had some basic statistics from our previous website on how many people accessed it, where they were from, and which pages they were looking at. One of the clear directives we had with Epic Sofia was to ensure that we had strategic placing, that we could generate revenue through the website, and that we could efficiently track the website statistics ourselves. 

The team was able to establish positive statistics. Our partners page had drive-through links, and we could easily understand which part of the website visitors go to. 

How did Epic Sofia perform from a project management standpoint?

Our communication with Elena and Miro was exceptional from the beginning. They were very receptive to our problems and made us feel like they cared for what we were trying to do. The team really listened and were so wonderfully creative. They married together what we did right on our old website and what we liked from their new designs, and reinvented a whole new set of designs that were even more exceptional and brilliant. We did not expect to get that amount of quality and expertise.

We initially gave the team a timeframe of around 10 weeks, but we had started getting a lot of great designs at week two when we were expecting it at around week six or week eight.

We were communicating via phone, Instagram messenger, Zoom, and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My first, real “wow” moment with Epic Sofia was when they showed us the document containing the beautiful designs. When we entered into a relationship with them, we didn’t think we would get anywhere near that level of creativity that they showed us.

Besides being passionate designers, they’re also incredibly proactive and helped us in areas beyond the basic website design. They designed our t-shirts, found a shirt printing company for us, and even assisted us with our videos and SEO. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s always good to give constructive feedback, but there wasn’t anything in particular that they did wrong. I think anybody who I’ve referred to them to will get a pretty amazing experience. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would assume that potential clients, like myself, would be very happy with Epic Sofia’s website development and design. 

Keep your thoughts open for what Epic Sofia might potentially be able to do for you, because there are a lot more areas that they are good at and they’re capable of doing much more beyond web design.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am one of the co-founders of Climbo, a company in the international education industry. Our markets are Spain and Latin America, and we recruit students to study abroad for either a summer program or a year-round program. We work with different organizations worldwide, including boarding schools.

What challenge were you trying to address with Epic Sofia?

We are starting a new branding and web development project. Last year was our target start, but we postponed it because of the crazy COVID-19 situation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, Epic Sofia asked us to fill out a brief of what would be involved in our project because they wanted to understand what we hoped to express to our future clients. First, they created our brand identity, logo, and materials. We’re not sure what the final deliverables will be, but they showed us mock-ups of how their designs would look on a t-shirt. They’ve also worked on our presentation portfolios, implementing our identity into everything.

Currently, they’re designing and developing a WordPress website. It will be an informational website with a blog, as well as a WhatsApp integration. Clients can book an interview with us through a calendar tool as well.

What is the team composition?

Miroslav (Partner and Digital Creative) is our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Epic Sofia?

When we started thinking about the project, we asked three companies to do our brand identity and website. There were three proposals: two from other companies in Spain that are dedicated to marketing, brand identity, and other things, and one from Epic Sofia. A friend recommended them to me because they work very well and are fast and punctual.

From the very beginning, Epic Sofia understood our business, what we’re dedicated to, and what we wanted to express with colors.

How much have you invested in them?

The design and development of the site cost €3,800 (approximately $4,500 USD), and the brand identity was €1,800 (approximately $2,100 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talking at the beginning of December 2020, and the brand identity was finished in January 2021. We’re still working with them on the website.

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

When it comes to the branding, people like our colors. In our industry, to be honest, there aren't any other fresh logos and colors. Ours is very different from what our competitors have. Ours is fresh, cool, and makes people want to read more about us.

How did Epic Sofia perform from a project management standpoint?

They are very patient, and they respond very fast, which we like. We have had a lot of meetings, and they are excellent with that. WhatsApp, Zoom, and email serve us in our communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Epic Sofia is a very good company. They are fresh and very punctual, and I like working with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The work was perfect, and I hope it will be like that for our website, which, from what I have seen so far, will be the case. This is why we chose them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Co Founder of Looming.Tech - we specialise in building tech for start-ups to scale-ups

For what projects/services did your company hire Epic Sofia, and what were your goals?

Epic were our chosen partner to help build our first website Our goals were to create an entire new branding, set of useable templates and a website that could serve as our portal to prospective new clients

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We knew of their exceptional quality through their work with clients in our network EPIC have a unique and fresh take on website design and we also knew that they would be incredible proctive in coming up with clever ideas

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had an initial workshop to discuss our ideas EPIC employ the use of a great form to build up a list of our needs - this was sent to four key personal at Looming/Tech and we amalgamated the answers in to one clear identity request sheet They suggested that they would send out a branding pdf within a couple of weeks and then use our feedback to send out a second set of recommendations

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Elena and Miro - Owners and Designers

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have used the analytics to show which countries are following the website and which areas of it they spend most time on Anecdotally we have received great feedback on our website - especially the stunning design

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

EPIC are very much a "in-person" company. So all calls were done by Zoom. The trust was there from the beginning and we felt no need to request too detailed info in terms of time capture. Communication was through emails and shared pdf sheets which worked fine

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

EPIC just have such a wonderful design eye. The first designs were very high quality — they showed that they understood us and our mission from the start.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

N/A