Case Studies

How did a combination of marketing strategy, stationery, mini catalogues and outsourced telemarketing help this new Brisbane company grow nationwide within just months?  After bringing Lily-Flame, one of the U.K’s leading boutique candle brands into Australia, Harvey & Nita needed to find a marketing partner that understood their needs as small business owners and could devise an effective way of cracking the competitive Australian retail candle market. They wanted their product in stores.

Facing many established competitors, Lily-Flame called upon Ronin Marketing to help with extensive branding development as well as creating business cards, brochures, and letters of introduction that would appeal to high-class Australian stockists.

“Working with Ronin has been an excellent decision for Lily-Flame. Our branding and marketing materials now work for us, and everything about the Lily-Flame brand says the right things to our prospective clients.”
“We are painlessly provided with leads from Ronin who go beyond the extra mile and are always delighting us with their dedication, flexible service and communication. Unlike some of the bigger companies, Ronin understand the needs of small business and the types of approaches that will get results.”  

The Case Study below is reprinted from our December 2008 Newsletter. Since then, we have worked with Woodland on a second website for their core shopfitting business, and overhauled their trade show approach, saving them tens of thousands in the process.  - Kurt Schubert, February 2010.

A big part of what Ronin achieves for people is providing them with a clear plan of attack and the tools with which to reach their goals. Woodland Maintenance is a great example of how much can be done in a very short period of time. Woodland Maintenance was established in 2003 as a service provided by Woodland Shopfitting. The shopfitting division counts BCF, Supercheap, Tarocash, Michael Hill Jewellers, IGA Supermarkets, Mary Ryan Bookstores, 7-11, and Golden Casket Newsagents among the companies they’ve served over the years.

“The Ronin team created a slick website from the information Kurt gathered. We learnt the importance of branding and getting the website and profile right the first time,” Ann relates. “The Website is exactly what we wanted, it’s modern, slick and looks very professional, and it’s the image we want to impart. The profile compliments the website beautifully and the whole package speaks volumes on our services.” Additionally, the search-engine optimised website appeared on Google at number one within 3 days of going online.

Once Ronin had all of the materials in place, the next step was to provide Ann with a lead generation system and a detailed written and verbal briefing on the best ways to approach prospective clients. In short, it’s a marketing system and sales primer in one.

Ann continues, “The suggestions Kurt made for the website and the profile were spot on, and within 3 weeks of using the the Sales and Marketing System provided to us by Ronin we had two new major clients and our business increased by 40%. Colorado was the first client and then Bras & Things came on board and we have also picked up Crabtree & Evelyn and Connor Clothing.  Colorado & B&T have been great with lots of work. Yes, business is good”

Michael Casablanca, Woodland's owner, speaking in October 2009:

“We expected that a marketing company would be good communicators, and with Ronin that’s exactly what we got. They really took the time to get to know our needs and what the market looks for first which helped in being able to portray the right image through our materials. Everything from our stationary through to the website is fantastic, stands out from the crowd and reflects exactly what we are all about. Sometimes it can be hard to judge how your marketing is working for you, but with Ronin the results speak for themselves.”

The Case Study below is reprinted from our September 2008 Newsletter. Since then, Urban have gone from strength to strength, experiencing a 250% growth in less than 3 years, even through the 2009 GFC.  - Kurt Schubert, February 2010.

Gary Allan’s currently a bit stressed and tired. He’s in the process of getting all the company’s current jobs out the door over the next few weeks before Urban shuts down its Archerfield workshop to move to a much larger manufacturing facility at Yatala. “It’s a big move,” he says. It’s also a necessary one. Urban’s grown at a steady rate in the last year or so, and they’ve been losing productivity because they’ve simply outgrown the premises they’ve worked out of for the last decade. Gary runs Urban Fountains and Furniture with his wife Claire – they design and manufacture street and outdoor furniture for a range of commercial and governmental projects Australia-wide.

They couldn’t afford an expensive sales rep that may or may not pay off so we engineered a set of solutions that would take a rep’s place for a fraction of the cost. We freshened up their logo and colour scheme to something more suited to the tastes and expectations of the architects, builders and specifiers that we needed to target. Among other things, we completely rebuilt the website and developed specification sheets that could be easily downloaded by specifiers. “Those things have saved me so much time. I get a lot less phone calls with people wanting details that we would then have to manually send them,” Claire relates.

With these materials in place, Urban and Ronin set out to push the brand and indeed the company, into the next stage of growth. Using a targeted e-marketing approach, to date Urban have been able to successfully network and introduce themselves to over 2500 architects, builders, construction managers and specifiers across Australia. This approach has resulted in an average of 700 visits a week on Urban’s website. Their latest catalogue was voluntarily downloaded by their target market over 6,000 times in the last month. It’s also meant huge changes to their bottom line.

On the back of the marketing systems and materials Ronin have implemented, Urban’s turnover has more than doubled from the previous financial year. Recent monthly figures indicate that it has tripled since the twelve months previously.

“Plus it’s not just that we’ve got more work. It’s better work. Whereas before we’d been tending to deal with the same smallish group of local councils and developers, now we’re shipping much more work to all over Australia,” notes Gary. “They’re the kind of projects that we want.” In fact, everyone in streets and parks from Townsville to the Gold Coast to Lane Cove are enjoying Urban’s furniture. “Working with Kurt has been a great experience that we have enjoyed,” says Claire. “It’s great to know we don’t need to worry about the marketing. We’re very pleased. The experience has been nothing but positive.”

Now Gary’s main concern is the move. “Moving is a stressful time but it is sign that things are really going well and too much work is a nice problem to have... and we have Kurt to thank for that. Now if only he had a moving van.....”