This is the story of the birth of a new company.

If you’re not involved in the garment industry, you won’t be aware of how important having a quality label produced for the garment is – on time and within budget.

Tight Margins, Immense Logistical Challenges

Unless the right label is available at the correct point in the garment production process, garments will arrive late in shops and may miss the season they’re intended for.

For retailer margins to be protected and brand owners to ensure the integrity of their brand, good management of label design, production and shipping is vital.

This industry operates at high speed, all around the world, twenty-four hours a day.

Birth of a Company

So when a British manufacturer devised a new way of managing this process effectively, using in-house developed web software, the question was: ‘how to bring this to market most effectively?’

Having decided to set up a new company, a combined team of goldsbrough and axongarside was selected to advise on the go-to-market strategy.

‘It may be unusual to bring in high-powered help right at the birth of a startup, but we knew it was the right thing to do’, said Peter Needle, managing director for the new company. ‘We had a limited window in which to launch our label management solution and take a leading position in the market. So we sought the advice of good people with deep experience in software and B2B marketing.’

The company needed a name. ‘We developed some alternative names, but I always think we should recommend the most appropriate one to our client’, said Ian Guiver, managing director of axongarside. ‘They’re paying us not only to be creative, but to use our experience of what works, and to encourage them to take brave steps when necessary.’

Of the options presented, axongarside’s proposal of labeldrop was the clear favourite, and was immediately chosen.

First Things First: Define the Value Proposition

But I’m telling the story out of sequence. Before naming the company, its value proposition had to be defined. I led this first part of the project.

Being able to say precisely why someone should choose what you’re offering, over all of the alternatives, is fundamental to good marketing.

To do that well, you really have to dig into the real concerns of the people you’re selling to, and see the world from their point of view.

How the Product Will Be Bought

The next problem I solved was how the software should be packaged and priced. By understanding the needs of different types of user, functionality in the web-based software was grouped into packages that would make sense to those users, and match what they needed to do.

Ian Hepworth, technology and operations director at labeldrop, commented, ‘Understanding how the product needed to be packaged for our users wasn’t just important for marketing. It really helped our software development. It was clear to us how the product should operate within those packages and we were working with a clear idea of what users would expect.’

Setting Pricing

I devised a tiered pricing structure that would allow a customer’s requirements to be catered for in the short and long term, with paths defined for them to take on additional functionality as they needed it.

‘Above all,’ said Peter Needle, ‘the pricing structure was simple for anyone to understand, yet it enabled us to sell our offering at a fair price that matched the customer’s requirements.

‘We’d discussed alternative pricing plans for a long time, without reaching a conclusion. Matthew brought clarity, and ensured that we are now able to get paid for the full value of what we’re selling.’

Turning the Value Proposition into Brand Identity

axongarside now came to the forefront to develop the brand identity for labeldrop, building on the work done on value proposition, packaging and pricing.

The creative work was based on researching what prospective customers would be familiar with in their working environment, and identifying the key elements that would communicate the core values of labeldrop to an international audience.

Emphatic use of a strong colour palette, in the logo and other elements of the identity, is designed to be attractive to people in the fashion industry, and was also used to help communicate the product packaging, with a highlight colour being used for each of the main packages, now named as labeldrop blue, labeldrop pink, and labeldrop green.

‘This was exactly what was needed for us to be in tune with what our customers would like to see,’ said Lianne Pemberton, marketing executive with labeldrop, ‘And yet, different enough from other companies in the market such that our new approach would come across.’

Launch

It was time to take the new identity out into the world, on a new website designed and built by axongarside. The website is designed to offer multiple pathways for people to get to know what labeldrop offers them, and then encourage them to find out more.

The website provides valuable backup to the sales approach, allowing the download of brochures and fact sheets. For customers, it also provides a portal through which they can manage their labeldrop account.

‘We have come a long way in a very short time,’ said Peter Needle. ‘With the help of goldsbrough and axongarside, we have put labeldrop on very firm foundations from which we to expect to rapidly grow.’

The post Software Startup Enters Market with Clear Value Proposition appeared first on goldsbrough.

I knew about apps which will assist collaboration when people are distributed across offices and around the world, but I hadn’t heard anything about what the iPad could do for the work of a smaller group gathered together, or just two people.

One day, I was talking to someone across a cafe table about a project, and making notes on my iPad. I tilted the iPad towards him, so that the screen image rotated the right way up for him to read. And then he put his finger on the screen and started moving the items in my list of notes, to alter their priority.

He didn’t pause for a moment to think ‘how do I interact with this software’, he just got on with it. In all the time I used a laptop, that reaction never occurred. The iPad is different – more tactile, more inviting, less formidable.

I frequently use the iPad now when I’m talking about ideas with clients. I put something on the screen and let them change it. It’s amazing how quickly a discussion moves along when that shared visual element can be part of the conversation, and how the conclusions reached can be very clear.

I suppose it’s similar to what you could do on a whiteboard, but this is portable and you can use it anywhere. Plus, when you’ve finished the conversation, you can share the ideas you worked on easily via email or uploads to websites.

Here are the apps I use most for this.

So that’s what I use. What do you use on your iPad to create and share ideas?

The post Best iPad Collaboration Apps: Making it Easy to Work on Ideas One-on-One appeared first on goldsbrough.

My ebook concentrates on how to write a plan – the way you should be thinking about it, and some of the key things you need to get right. Using a software package to document the plan makes sense, particularly if it helps you to create the numbers part of your plan – your sales projections, cash flow forecasts, and the rest.

Compared to Business Plan Pro, the software of this type I’m most familiar with, BPW has rather less features, but it has almost all of the core ones you need for a first-time plan. BPW is also considerably less expensive*.

A clear structure is laid out on the left, and you work through it in the order that makes sense to you. You’ll maybe fill in all of the high level bits, and then go back to each section to expand the detail. In each section, you input words or numbers, while alongside are two other windows. The first gives advice on what you should include, and the second gives example content. I really like all of this being on the screen at the same time.

I spoke to Dave and learned that he’s planning an update.

A more up-to-date look and feel is part of his plan, but I think the current interface works well enough. It has a no-nonsense feel that doesn’t get in the way. (I ran the software on a Mac, on a Parallels virtual machine, so the screen shot won’t look like it would on a regular Windows computer)

Dave would also like to include more formatting choices – at the moment, you can’t include tables in your text sections, for example. I’ve seen people get obsessed with what a plan looks like long before they’ve got the plan to make sense, so I hope a new release doesn’t take BPW too far away from the rather plain output that the software currently produces. After all, if you want to do some fancy formatting as a final step, you can export BPW’s output to a word processor.

The main benefit of software such as this for a first-time planner is the assistance it gives in putting your numbers together. Here, BPW does a good job. Yes, it could give some alerts if key ratios are out of whack, and it could provide fuller support for costing, but those are also features that are being looked at in the next release. For the moment, the numbers part of Business Plan Writer is otherwise quite robust.

If you’re writing your first business plan, I hope my ebook is by your side. I’d encourage you to take a look at business planning software rather than try to do your numbers in a spreadsheet, as many people are inclined to do. You’ll spend less time worrying about whether your formulas are correct, and more time actually writing the plan, which is exactly what you should be trying to do.

* On the subject of cost, Business Plan Writer originated in work done with social enterprises, and if you’re in one of those, advantageous pricing is available.

The post Software Review: Business Plan Writer by Application Insight appeared first on goldsbrough.

Click the image to get the book from Amazon for your Kindle (or Kindle reader app).

One of the topics covered is the setting of objectives. People tend to think that objectives have to be measurable – sales targets, growth, profit margin – and I absolutely agree.

But some of your objectives will be ‘fuzzy’, and that’s OK.

Let me tell you a story.

A while ago, I found a scruffy old Greek school exercise book while clearing out a cupboard. I must have used it while on holiday many years ago. One page was headed ‘Freedom Plan’. I don’t remember writing it, but it’s my objectives for my working life. Amongst some concrete goals, it lists objectives for a business such as ‘I can take my dogs and cats to work’, ‘Isn’t something that goes out of style’, and ‘Can be supplemented by Internet’.

At the time, I might have been abashed at writing those in a formal business plan, but I wouldn’t be now. They were clearly important to me – and every single one of them has come to pass. I achieved all of my fuzzy objectives.

So when you’re writing your business plan (aided by my ebook!), do allow yourself to add to your measurable goals those fuzzy objectives that are important to you. Only you know what those might be.

Then you’ll have the complete picture of what kind of business you’re trying to create. And a more useful business plan.

The post Writing a Business Plan: How ‘Fuzzy’ Can My Goals Be? appeared first on goldsbrough.

Bill asked me to help improve their marketing in EMEA. After some intial work, it was clear to both of us that the scope should be widened to look at Kalido’s market positioning and their process of acquiring customers.

Immediately after the project, Bill said ‘The work Matthew did for me at Kalido was a significant factor in shaping our future direction’.

In a recent phone conversation I dug into how Bill makes effective use of external advisors.

BH: At the time, there were many conflicting opinions about how our performance could be improved. I needed a way of focusing on the problem to bring things to a head.

I could have asked my US based marketing team to look into it, but their understanding of how the EMEA market operates wouldn’t have been deep enough. If I’d been able to spend the time, I could have investigated what was needed myself. But most importantly of all, I needed objectivity.

It’s not that you can’t trust what you hear from your colleagues, but it’s inevitable that what they tell a CEO will have some degree of sugar-coating or bias, no matter how small. What you get by going outside for advice is investigation and opinions that you can trust will be free from that internal bias.

So hiring the right advisor is crucial. Tell me what you looked for?

In addition to objectivity, I needed really deep knowledge of the EMEA market, which you’ve got, but within the context of how a US company should operate there, which you also know a lot about.

I also needed whoever worked on the project to be able to rapidly build trust with my people. After all, what’s the point of getting some recommendations if they can’t be actioned, because my colleagues don’t view their author as a trusted friend of the company?

The process we went through involved me talking to a lot of people inside Kalido, as well as your customers and industry analysts, and then coming up with some detailed recommendations. How did you feel about the recommendations I presented you with?

You were clear about what you were going to do, how you’d do it, and you kept me in the loop whenever necessary. That was all great.

Along the way, you gained the respect of the people you dealt with, which was vital. The report you delivered was a platform on which I built consensus in my team about what needed to be done. Everyone who you’d consulted could see a little bit of their version of ‘the answer’ in the bigger picture you presented.

More than that, what you recommended was actionable. Too often, you get advice which is too vague or theoretical; you used your hard-edged experience of having to implement change, so everything you said to us could be acted upon.

So, if a CEO is looking for some external advice, what else should they be thinking about?

Being clear about which problem you need to solve is crucial, and you can use an external advisor to help frame the questions even before they’re hired.

That’s what you did with me – you got me to think about precisely what the scope of the project was, and then advised me to change it once we’d got into it.

An external advisor should, if they’re good, ask challenging questions all the way through their engagement with you – just like you did.

If you’re thinking about working with someone outside your company to improve its performance, I believe Bill’s comments will help you see how you can do that most effectively.

And if you’ve already done that, write a comment to share your experience of making good use of external business advice.

The post Top Tips From a CEO: Using External Business Advisors Effectively appeared first on goldsbrough.