Vermillion Sky

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder of a beauty tutorial app that allows users to shop for beauty products.

What challenge were you trying to address with Vermillion Sky?

I was looking for a company to help me build the first version of the app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I came to them with the designs and Vermillion Sky handled all the development and provided feedback on the design. This is an iOS app that creates a three-step photo/video tutorial. Users can take pictures and the app puts them together into a single post with a caption for each individual photo. The app allows to rearrange the video clips and then publish the post. There is also a social component, so customers can follow other people. We use a third-party shopping cart and APIs to make the app shoppable.

What is the team composition?

I primarily worked with their CEO.

How did you come to work with them?

Someone recommended them to me. We had a quick meeting to make sure our goals aligned and our relationship started there.

How much have you invested with them?

I spent between $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in June 2014 and the project was completed in August 2016.

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

I received a lot of positive feedback on the app. I had to continue improving the design (Vermillion Sky didn't do the design for the app), but there were no major issues with the development. If there were bugs, they addressed them immediately.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They took a lead and met all the milestones. We stayed in touch via Skype and email, and we also had in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We worked collaboratively and their feedback was very beneficial. I didn’t have to make all the decisions alone.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Leverage the positive aspects of the collaborative process. Stay involved and consider it a partnership.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a founder and product manager at Foodeaze, a food online ordering company. Foodeaze offers a combined service of food photography and food online ordering where hungry diners swipe through restaurant photo menus to place delivery and pickup orders. Swipe, order, and eat!

What challenge were you trying to address with Vermillion Sky?

There are three things all food-ordering apps have in common being diners order the food, they want the food hot, and they want the food fast. Well, a lot of food online ordering companies don’t have a full-service delivery option for restaurants along with having basically no control over the restaurant’s kitchens and wait line management system. With that being said our company can really only control one part of that process being the ordering system provided to diners from the app. In order to achieve offering a better option to diners, our company needed overall design help for the app, including UI and UX services, to make our designs and functionality stand out from our competitors.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We gave Vermillion Sky lots of documentation in the beginning like general designs, wireframes, and mockups. While we had some familiarity in front-end code, we mostly followed Vermillion Sky’s lead on the back end. The full stack for our web app included HTML, CSS, Core Java, react.JS, PHP along with several additional integration technologies.

These integrations included our order-receivable faxing partner, multiple credit card processors, and a Geolocation tool to name just a few of them. Currently, we’re working on a point of sale integration. Vermillion Sky also did focus group work throughout the development process, to ensure customer satisfaction and helping to keep us being a stakeholder involved in the process from start to finish. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with multiple user experience designers and developers all managed by a project manager.

How did you come to work with Vermillion Sky?

The founder of Vermillion Sky and I actually met through WeWork when it first started in New York City., We had back and forth communications for a while We were looking at other development options. Interestingly enough, we kept running into each other, and then one thing led to another where we decided to hire Vermillion Sky. Now, it’s been three years of our company working with his company. In that decision process though, Vermillion Sky’s moral integrity and sense of social responsibility stood out to us and matched our own company culture.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000 and $200,000 working with Vermillion Sky.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with Vermillion Sky since August 2016.

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

Client acquisition has increased approximately 150% within the last year. We have also gotten some great brand recognition in our niche marketplace, which has increased consumer engagement.

​​​​​​How did Vermillion Sky perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Skype and email to communicate with Vermillion Sky along with Slack and Trello for collaborative tool purposes. We also use Mixpanel to track KPIs and address pain points in order to come up with new features and integrate them into app roadmap for Vermillion Sky. For the actual development process, we have been working on Agile methodologies continually going through redesigns and adding new app features, as a result of focus group research provided by Vermillion Sky

During our first year working with Vermillion Sky, our company was going through its beta stage and Vermillion Sky did its best to match our continually changing deadlines. After the success of the beta our scheduling for launch deadlines on new and enhanced app features became much more organized with Vermillion Sky.. Once our app moved from its beta to live launch, the deliverables and timelines much better matched our expectations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Vermillion Sky helped us build an app that as it grows brand presence will work even better in the future than it does now. Based on the UX and UI decisions we made with Vermillion Sky, the customer base will grow into our technology, functionality, and designs, until it becomes mainstream and adopted by other companies and their apps.

Are there any areas they could improve?

A lot of development companies do weekly or bi-weekly updates, but daily responses would be most efficient for Agile methodologies depending on sprint timetables. Since tech-oriented companies tend to move at such a fast pace, the update protocol of many development companies in the New York City area has this issue in our opinion.

Any advice for potential customers?

In our experience, everything’s on an app development spectrum where there are two anchorage points of providing too much documentation or providing a sentence or a paragraph. Since the development of any app is a team effort when hiring a development company to collaborate with on it, you can’t expect a development company to build a great app if you can’t communicate it to them or are not open to changes anything your current plans. It really is all about balance. You should come with ideas and open to the development company’s suggestions and ideas. It all works best when the process is truly a collaborative one.

Please describe your company and your position there.

SirenMD is a secure, real-time communication and collaboration platform designed for sports medicine and athletic teams. I run SirenMD's operations

For what projects/services did your company hire Vermillion Sky, and what were your goals?

Vermillion Sky served as a development resource for SirenMD.

How did you select Vermillion Sky and what were the deciding factors?

We selected Vermillion Sky based on our previous work with Ken and his good recommendations.

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

Work was conducted on our native iOS and Android applications, as well as our web-based portal.

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

Ken and other resources

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

All components of the platform have been updated during the project.

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

We primarily used Notion, Jira, and Slack.

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

We found their ability to be flexible the most impressive and unique.

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

One area for improvement is more structure and communication. Weekly one-page development reports and regular communication would be helpful.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of a fashion company focusing on Fashion News , Castings calls and Advise in todays world

For what projects/services did your company hire Vermillion Sky, and what were your goals?

Web development of my site. along with updates and changes of brand.

How did you select Vermillion Sky and what were the deciding factors?

Product results, expertise in the field and the ability to execute. Also Ken is very knowledgeable

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

The development of site. Castings call sections. The blog for fashion information

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

There were 2 people who were on the team that I spoke with. I spoke to Ken Vermeille and Kim Alban. There were other developers assigned to the project.

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

We were able to get a lot of signups for a fashion show and we were able to make some revenue on the project. In addition shortly after that we were in a magazine

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

We used Slack, email and phone calls on a weekly timeline. He used something called scrum.

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

I love the energy of the team. They were very understanding of my needs and what we wanted to accomplish

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

I think that they were great, there were some times that I was too busy to make a meeting and we had to wait a couple of days to get another meeting.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Daily Leaf. The daily leaf is a discounted cannabis site.

For what projects/services did your company hire Vermillion Sky?

App and website development.

What were your goals for this project?

To build a comprehensive app that helps our users save money.

How did you select Vermillion Sky?

He built a cross platform app that helps us limit data entry to just one step.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we hired Ken, we were off to the races. It did take a while to complete the project, but it was built from the ground up.

What was the team composition?

I worked with Ken directly with any and all issues.

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

Ken was great, he can get busy and sometimes difficult to Get on the phone but overall we are very happy

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

When we started using Slack it made everything really smooth.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Ken was very organized and his break down was very comprehensive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The team was very organized and they explained everything comprehensively.