COMPETITOR RESEARCH

CAS DIRECT COMPETITOR RESEARCH AND INTERVIEWS 

Desktop Research into competitor single entities, design studios and agencies globally were investigated for comparison and analysis, summarised in the table below.  

Fig. 2. Wiggett, 2022b. CAS Competitor Table. 

Direct Competition Identified - Interviews

I conducted interviews with my direct competitors as part of my research study. 

Frederik Peens Interview – The Mark Studio 
The studio is 11 years old. Frederik began doing logos and other designs but realized it was too time-consuming and clients didn’t want to pay for the hours spent. With packaging, clients can physically hold the final product which makes them more likely to spend money on it. Packaging is more profitable. 

1. How do you get and retain clients?
- All work has come through the website. 
- He got attention from entering Pentawards once and that resulted in one overseas client and referrals until he has many overseas clients. 
- Client onboarding comes through the website. He has a standard reply to sift through clients. E.g. Can they give him an idea of their budget and a detailed brief.?If they answer, are friendly and engaging he takes on the project. 

2. How is your company structured?
- It is just Frederik as a sole entity. 
- He does everything himself except for illustration and retouching.
- His business strategy is different to mine in that he only takes on smaller, niche clients and brands where he can create portfolio work and execute wit ithin a week. He charges a premium for this and allows clients to roll out in-house for a fee. He also offers assistance at an hourly rate. 
- He doesn’t want to do rollout, only conceptual work. 
- He does not do big projects as they would take up too much time. 
- He doesn’t use freelance designers because it takes too much time to brief them and he could already be executing the work. Time is more of a factor than finances. 

3. What avenues of business/ operations do you struggle with?
- His strategy and structure have created a good working balance. Sometimes things get crazy but he likes being busy and would rather take on more for slightly less cost so that he is busy all the time and working on great projects. 

4. What are your overheads?
- He has very low overheads. 
- He doesn’t work from home because he never stops working which he discovered in lockdown. 
- His rental is next to nothing because he took storage space in town from a landlord and did it up with a great rental agreement. 

5. What is your rate card?
- The hourly rate is R1500 an hour. 
- Monthly income is around R200000 a month. 
* This means that his strategy of taking on smaller, more prestigious work and executing quickly works out just as profitable as the larger projects I take on. He bills more for conceptual work whereas I bill for execution. 

6. How do you market yourself?
- Website and portfolio 

7. What competitions do you enter?
- Pentawards.
- He gained huge traction from this in the overseas market and now the majority of his clients are based there. 

7. How often do you shoot for your portfolio?
- He needs to update his site and brand. He hasn’t done so for 4 years because there is always too much work coming in. 
- He also goes to extreme lengths to photography portfolio pieces so that the website looks amazing. 

8. What network of collaborators do you have?
- After Pentawards he has collaborated abroad on projects. He seems to have a good network overseas but wanted to do an NBA to grow that network. He says that South Africans don’t value other South African designers and all his collaborations have come from abroad. 

9. Do you freelance or work with agencies?
- He does, at an hourly rate of R1500 per hour. 

10. What is client feedback regarding the brand?
- The focus is on his portfolio of work and not the brand. 

11. Do you want to grow?
- He was thinking about it before lockdown and thank heaves he didn’t. 
- His mentor advised him that with staff of 3 you will earn the same or less than you do as a sole entity. With a staff of 5 you start to make higher profits. The pressure to pay 5 salaries a month though isn’t work it. - More money, means more problems. 
- His mentor told him to never have 1 client paying 40% of your bills. 

12. Who is your competition?
- He doesn’t see the need for competition. There is enough work going around. 
 - Other sole entities
ADAM HILL 
TERENCE KITCHING
SIMON FROUWS

Eddie Haumann Interview - Haumann Smal Design Studio

1. Company info. – size, service offering, years in businesses
- Predominately Wine Label Packaging and CI
- Partner is Linda
- 27 years in business
- Began work with Jannis Ashby Design Agency
- Specialise in craft
- Biggest challenge is digital
- 7 people in total
- Junior Designers and Senior Freelancers

2. How do you get and retain clients?
- Word of mouth and reputation

3. How is your company structured?
- Strategy is to focus on being a niche packaging design studio, specifically for Wine Labels
- Also do beer, spirits and gin
- 2 x owners and junior designs do the work, and senior freelancers are brought on occasionally for niched work because they are too expensive. Owners have struggled to keep up with the digital age. 

4. What avenues of business/ operations do you struggle with?
- Clients want to pay less than they did 10 years ago. 
- Cannot afford Senior Designers
- Have had to adjust output to fewer hours so the jobs make a little money

5. What is your rate card?
- Quote on a value-based system instead of hourly. 
- Hourly rate is R1100.00
- R20000-R30000 for CI/ logo design
- Roughly R60000 for a full wine label and identity
- Master file R3500. Design R900 – R11000 for rollout. R1200 for FA

6. How do you market yourself – LinkedIn, Instagram, website?
- Reputation and website. 

7. What competitions do you enter?
- Do not believe in competitions. They are too expensive, and the portfolio is more valuable. 
- SA awards don’t have a good reputation. 
- Clients enter them into awards
* which seems to be the norm in the alcohol industry and is where most of the awards and portfolios are built up. It is category-dependent. 

8. What sets you apart from the competition?
- We know how to market wine. We can set up the architecture and structure for many lines to come over the years. We can guarantee results because we place the wine in the right category.
- There are a lot of fly-by nights but we build the correct foundations for the brand.
- This is where our reputation and experience come in.

DIRECT COMPETITION IDENTIFIED ANALYSIS

Mark/ Simon Frouws/ Terence Kitching - Single Entity studios
The following attributes apply to all three studios.
Profits R100 000 – R200 000 per month is higher than CAS
Hourly rates R950 – R1500 are higher than CAS
Bespoke, and very niched in bespoke luxury alcohol design and packaging.
These studios have low levels of active marketing and a footprint in exhibitions and awards.
Advertising is Instagram, Website & Word of Mouth, and the majority of their sales pipelines are through referrals rather than generated from active marketing.
All operate as individuals, but under a ‘Studio’ name, and are set up as a company rather than a freelancer, emphasizing personalized services in the same manner as CAS.
Their existing portfolio of work is exceptionally good.
All three of these studios are based in Cape Town and are actively in the process of expanding to international clients to do higher profile work for increased profits, rather than scale their studios to increase volume.
There exists a notion in the design industry that niche, limited run or bespoke alcohol design attracts the best design studios, and offers the greatest margins, but also demands the most creative and flexible lead times.
Although exceptionally good, their narrow focus and specialized nature imply that these single entity studios are not a direct threat or in competition with CAS at this time.

Hauman Smal / Anthony Lane Design - Small Design Studio
2 to 7 people 
Profits R100 000 – R200 000, profits equal to or less than CAS 
Hourly rates R1100 – R1500 higher than CAS
Specializes in Bespoke packaging 
Both studios have larger overheads
Both studios focus mainly on alcohol
Both confirmed that their main sales pipeline comes from word-of-mouth referrals 
Neither advertises actively
Both studio's clients enter awards or competitions on their behalf.
Both consist of 2 personal teams, the founder and a junior designer.
Less profitable than the specialized single entity studios above, and focused on more mainstream alcohol packaging, these studios may prove to be a threat if they decide to pivot away from alcohol in search of increased margins, or wishes to expand their product offerings to their existing clients.
Both of these studios are small enough to compete with CAS on personalized offering and flexibility.

Monday / One Design -  Mid Design Studio
7 and 15 people respectively
Specialize in strategic brand, packaging design for larger clients/retail
They frequently enter awards and have a focused advertising campaign, with visibility on digital/social media.
They are very profitable; the exact number could not be verified
Fixed staff and fixed offices result in high overheads per working individual.
Both Monday and One Design focus on strategic packaging design and can do boutique designs or roll out 200SKU’s 
Both studios offer a broad spectrum of packaging design 
They have great websites & portfolios 
They can likely pick & choose clients and work
These two studios can be considered to be in direct competition with CAS, and pose a threat based on their larger size and ability to execute a wider spectrum of services in the same domain as CAS. They are, however, more expensive and are not attractive to the smaller-sized customers that form the core of CAS clients.

Just Design, Bravo Design, M&A Design - Large Design Studio
17 - 50 People
Offer packaging, brand, creative strategy, advertising services
They appear to mimic larger agencies and are housing some, but not all services in-house including design, production, strategy, copywriting and legal / accounting. 
These studios frequently enter awards and competitions and have dedicated marketing and sales teams.
No information on their overheads or profit margins could be obtained.
Their client base is established and is both in SA and International.  
The larger nature of these design studios and their apparent journey to mimic or compete with full-fledged agencies excludes them as direct competition for CAS. traditionally these studios would not work on the relatively small projects that form the core of CAS’s portfolio, and it is expected that their base price point for typical work packages would be prohibitively expensive for CAS's existing client base.

Turner Duckworth. Pearl Fisher, Big Fish, Landor - Agency
50+ People
Well-established agencies with full-spectrum capabilities, track records and portfolios.
Multi-million turnover, but with unknown profitability.
These agencies cater to big companies in need of a wide variety of services, over a long time frame and having relatively big budgets.
The nature of agencies in Cape Town does not position them as direct competition for CAS. The success factors that have been identified as key to CAS, are almost completely absent in the engagement and execution format of large agencies.
The flexibility of agencies is varied. While being able to provide a full spectrum of services, many agencies rely on relative junior staff for large portions of the design and execution with guidance and oversight from experienced professionals.
The result of this operational strategy, coupled with the fact that their client base tends to be more traditional corporate clients, results in design output that is less risky and more conventional. This in itself furthermore caters for a slightly different audience than CAS’s current client base, reducing the likelihood of direct competition.