Growing the business - Case Study

April 20, 2004

The Background

Ivan Earnshaw had developed his business Tropical Grove Nursery into one of Australia's leading wholesale suppliers of palm trees. As a wholesale operation, Tropical Grove Nursery's main point of contact with its client base was via the telephone.

Marketing collateral of the business included just a business card:

Customers found the business either through word of mouth or direct contact.

Ivan is one of those clients you love to have. No BS. Good, decent guy who is a go-getter in his industry. Makes decisions quickly. He wanted to start things off slowly with the items below.

The Brief

Update the look and feel of the external business collateral:

1. Develop a new logo for the business

2. Provide a range of business literature:

• letterhead
• with compliments slips
• envelopes
• business cards

3. Develop a web site

All of the above were to be developed with a view to a more extensive range of collateral being produced in the medium term. This meant that the logo needed to be effective on media from a business card to a web site to signage to the side of semi-trailers.

Objectives

The objectives of the project was to provide Tropical Grove Nursery with the initial marketing and business collateral to present an industry-leading professional edge to the market.

The collateral provide was to aid the positioning of the business as progressive, technologically advanced and customer focused, as well as allow an easy and effective way for the products of the business to be demonstrated to an Australia-wide audience.

Target Market

The target market is initially the purchasing managers of retail outlets who purchase large quantities of quality palm trees.

The Actions

After an extensive discussion with the client, including review of his property and existing marketing collateral, logos were provided for analysis.

Click here for a draft of initial logos provided

(file size is 143 kb - will take about 1 minute to download on a 56k modem).

(Please note: These logos are in format for viewing with Adobe's Acrobat Reader. To download Adobe Acrobat Reader (Version 6) free, click here.)

In consultation with the Tropical Grove team and our great graphic artist, we identified the features of the initial drafts required and moved forward to develop, over a couple of drafts, the final approved logo.

The final logo was selected and approved.

Read on to page 2 of the Tropical Grove Case Study

Brendon Sinclair