Spacespire

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I'm an executive at IT Cluster Transcarpathia

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

IT Cluster is a Ukrainian IT community, created after the beginning of the full scale war, to support IT specialists and businesses internationally displaced to Transcarpathian region.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Spacespire to accomplish?

• Creating brand identity
• Creating the website
• Communications and marketing for project launch

SOLUTION

How did you find Spacespire?

Referral

Why did you select Spacespire over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Spacespire were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We worked with Spacespire from the beginning of the project. They have undertaken the following tasks as volunteers: 

• Branding development. The brand concept Spacespire team came up with was based on the idea of merging the original Transcarpathian folk style with the visual identity hinting at tech innovations. 
• Presentations for the community and investors. The main challenge that we tackled was to build a sophisticated and immediately identifiable picture as fast as possible, in order to attract the first participants and partners. Spacespire performed exceptionally and exceeded our expectations while working under an extremely tight deadline. 
• Website development. The website's overall structure has been intended to accommodate the wide range of screen resolutions typically used by IT professionals, including 4k and ultra-wide displays. 
• Social media strategy development and implementation. The SMM department had to come up with a way to both follow our predetermined content strategy while at the same time staying flexible in case some unexpected news would break.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Just in two months, the Cluster gained over 150 IT industry representatives as resident members and partners, including some of Ukraine’s largest companies. The Transcarpathian IT Cluster became the first venture of its kind in the region, and it lends its support not just to established companies but also to freelance IT professionals. 
• Over the 5 months, Spacespire helped us organize more than 20 events. As part of the branding process, several types of merchandise were produced. They highlight the brand's individuality and became very popular among the visitors of Cluster's activities.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Spacespire met the deadlines by 90%, despite the fact that the wartime circumstances made this exceedingly difficult. They handled our questions and demands expertly. We conducted frequent team calls and talked in a Telegram group chat to keep our work fruitful.

What was your primary form of communication with Spacespire?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

We are amazed by the team's professionalism. They are detail-oriented and reply fast to inquiries. Spacespire truly became a member of the team, not simply a contractor. If you need a crew with blazing hearts and expert minds, go no further.

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

Nothing big comes to mind, because the guys swiftly adjusted any requests or suggestions we made. They perform an excellent job.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former COO of CSGO.Cash.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spacespire?

The founder of the company had an idea, and we wanted to make it happen. We had the idea of creating a marketplace for in-game items. We discussed it for a while, and we decided that CSGO was the proper game to start this marketplace because it was a cyber gaming discipline with many active players. 

We had the idea, but we needed the project to be wrapped around and ready to enter the market. We hired Spacespire to provide us with a market entrance strategy. After we started working with them, we understood that they were capable of helping us with this project and more.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

During our collaboration over the two years, they did everything marketing-wise for us, starting with the marketing strategy. They helped us with brand identity and a visual identity that was consistent with the game style.  

Spacespire also managed our development team and helped with our website, a web service for selling in-game items. In this case, that included skins of the weapons that were in the game that the player could choose; players were able to customize the appearance of the weapons they were using in that game, which was a commodity at that time.

We didn’t have any documentation to give them, but we had the idea and a couple of our own developers, and they were able to bring it to life. Spacespire was in charge of the project’s UI/UX, the interfaces, and user flows across these platforms; they also did marketing campaigns for us in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries.

Additionally, they handled social networking, influencer marketing, crowd marketing, and SEO. We also collaborated to create loyalty, referral, and affiliate programs for users. Spacespire came up with a gamification implementation based on the number of sold skins, user badges, and a type of army ranking. Bonuses were tied to those things, so if someone sold more, they had a better price and a better status.

Apart from that, there were a lot of giveaways and viral activities that Spacespire was involved in. They did more than we ever expected because we were looking for a partner that could provide us with marketing services and a turnkey solution.

What is the team composition?

It was a large team of over 15 people. We worked with the owner, the art director, and a team of four people who worked on SEO and did an enormous job with the blog content, articles, backlinks, and managing our domain ranking. They did the analytics and paid ads on their side, and 2–3 people managed the influencers because we had created YouTube videos and reviews of our services with the active players.

How did you come to work with Spacespire?

It was through a recommendation from a friend.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together between March 2016–November 2018. The project stabilized, and some market issues that were not connected to Spacespire or us caused us to wind down the activities bit by bit. Spacespire continued to support us for a while, even afterward, with advice and reminders to do certain things.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

With their help, we were able to launch within four months, which was very good for this kind of project. We achieved around 500 daily users within the first three months and became the second-largest platform in terms of turnover in the CIS market. We were able to grow to 2,250 active daily users within one year, and Spacespire helped us see the potential we had, developing four services instead of one.

How did Spacespire perform from a project management standpoint?

During the first couple of months, there were a lot of meetings between management to understand the scope, possible strategies, and budget, and they aided us in market research. With their help, we were able to understand what to expect from the market. We had a powerful competitor in the market and were hesitant and unsure if there was a place for us, but there was.

Later on, things were organized into weekly and monthly reports on every aspect we were dealing with; this included projects, SEO, paid advertisements, and web and app development. The team from Spacespire was consistently available, and we could always reach them in our chats.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They went above and beyond. We weren’t expecting that level of service, but we were very glad we partnered with them. Even in difficult situations, they were able to deliver and talk with us to come up with a decision and understanding together. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s hard to tell right now because it was quite a while ago. We had some ups and down, and for the first couple of months, we were getting to know each other’s language, but after that, things were perfect. There were some issues, but they were solved and dealt with appropriately and in a timely manner. We never had any issues or hesitancy on whether we should continue working with them because we were 100% sure that they would support us.