Westwerk

BACKGROUND

Could you describe your company?

My company is divided with a lot of companies, but specifically, Westwerk completed design work for a retail mall. It’s the small mall with a few national accounts.

What is your position within the company?

Manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenges were you attempting to address when you began the relationship with Westwerk?

To increase sales to the individual merchants, and the mall as a whole. To generate activity, and to update the mall itself physically, meaning if we had a blank wall to have them design something attractive to the mall, as well as giving that vibrancy to make it look like there’s more activity. One objective for the merchants themselves was to increase local traffic on weekends.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Westwerk Design to work with?

Very fortunately for us, Westwerk had been the business designer for a restaurant group from Minneapolis that had chosen to locate across the street from us. Westwerk did the design concepts, the branding and everything from venues and advertising, and it was so impressive that I had to use them for ourselves. 

Could you describe the scope of the project in greater detail?

The merchants have an association, and part of their rent fee goes into an association fee. The merchants have have to agree as a group on advertising and marketing. It starts as a pretty small scope because they have a limited budget, but because the work was so impressive, they became very creative in expanding their budget. I can’t give you in terms of actual dollars, what their budget was but, I know it increased because they were so impressed with Dan’s work. They were finding anywhere they could cut out to have him do this work.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this project in monetary terms?

It would be probably under $50,000, but close to that amount. 

When was the site completed and launched?

I don’t have any paperwork in front of me, but I’m going to guess three years ago. I think we’re on our third campaign with him because not only did he do the website, but he does a marketing campaign for us annually.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

My staff has been very impressed with their work. We went into the project with minimal experience and relatively low expectations, especially after hearing some of the horror stories around IT projects. I have to say that what we received was well beyond what we asked. I really can't sing their praise enough. 

When working with them, is there anything you'd consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

I‘m not sure I have words in my vocabulary to define the difference. The merchants had worked with a local firm, and their computers didn’t work. It was amateur versus professional basically. I hate to put down somebody else, but the difference is so huge in margin. I don’t know how to define it. It’s beautiful, and I was just mesmerized by it. I think he rivals anything I’ve seen in New York and D.C. and Minneapolis, but just in my personal working experience, it’s not even comparable actually.

In retrospect, are there areas you think they could improve on as a service provider?

It’s funny, because I find myself using really off-the-chart words, but I really mean them. The merchants are pretty tough customers and there are deadlines involved. I’ve given this some thought because I know my review is so glowing, and I’m trying to think, "Is there anything I can criticize them on?" I just can’t think of a thing.