American Express OPEN Forum: Powering Small Business Success

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WOMAN
American Express Open is empowering business owners. Follow our new miniseries as we pair different small businesses, each with their own experienced branding agency, who is also a small business. ArtYarns was born several years ago when Iris Schreier and her husband, Elliot, decided to make their own line of luxury hand-painted yarns.
IRIS SCHREIER
ArtYarns started because I was writing a book and looking for yarns that I couldn’t find available on the market. So I decided to create some of those yarns. They’re hand-dyed in a variety of colors. They’re sourced from Japan and Italy. The yarns are maintained here in boxes in raw white form. We custom dye them to the customer’s specifications. And we do have over 25 different yarn qualities.
WOMAN
Iris and Elliot are being paired with Dominic and Lesley from Officelab, a New York City-based branding agency whose task is to rebrand ArtYarns over an intense two-month period.
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
A brand, to me, is the essence of the company. It’s the face you wear to the world. It’s what somebody else is going to buy when they buy your product. They’re also buying your identity.
DOMINIC SINESIO
The process for building a brand begins with your … your fundamental business objectives. Understanding who the audience is, what the core proposition is.
WOMAN
Iris and Elliot from ArtYarns make the trip from White Plains, New York, to New York City to visit Dominic and Lesley at Officelab.
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
Do you guys want to sort of give us … give us some words that might help describe, you know, in any way, you know, just who … who you are?
IRIS SCHREIER
The three words I think we used were quality, luxury and value because we feel that it’s really important to get those across somehow, especially to online customers who don’t have the opportunity to feel and touch the yarn; and a lot of people say to us, “Oh, we didn’t realize that there was this type yarn. We didn’t realize that your cashmere feels the way it does.”
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
Yeah, you don’t want your … your … the first experience somebody has with your actual branding to down sell your product. I’m blown away by the quality of the product itself. I think the branding really down sells it.
ELLIOT SCHREIER
Uh, I didn’t realize how much was involved in terms of the processes that you guys go through for the … for the branding. I guess we’re still sort of, uh, not clear on our own what we wanted in branding. So we’re looking at you actually just some …
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
Sure.
ELLIOT SCHREIER
… so you can tell us what we should be doing branding wise (Overlap)
DOMINIC SINESIO
Okay.
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
Uh-hm.
DOMINIC SINESIO
Is there any pushback from your clients how … or, you know, do they get the product and say, “You know what? It doesn’t quite match, you know” (Overlap)
ELLIOT SCHREIER
Oh, yeah.
IRIS SCHREIER
Oh …
DOMINIC SINESIO
(Inaudible)
IRIS SCHREIER
… all the time.
ELLIOT SCHREIER
All the time.
DOMINIC SINESIO
Really?
IRIS SCHREIER
But let’s take a look here. Here’s the number.
ELLIOT SCHREIER
(Inaudible)
IRIS SCHREIER
And this is number 153. And here’s 153 so look at the difference.
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
Yeah. So the, uh … they’re sort of (Overlap)
DOMINIC SINESIO
Wow!
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
Yeah.
IRIS SCHREIER
I really felt very good about their attempts to get into the mind-set of our company and really get a good understanding of what our business was all about.
DOMINIC SINESIO
Especially we have become very clear what a few small, uh, changes in collateral can do for your guys. Ultimately I think the deliverables will be a set of standards that, uh … that work for them in a … in a manual format. New tags. And an ad campaign that uses a series of image assets that we create. The advertising will make a difference for ArtYarns in that they’ll reinforce what is really already there.
IRIS SCHREIER
They’re extremely talented. I was pretty much wowed.
DOMINIC SINESIO
I think it’s very apparent that they … ArtYarns needs a … a rebrand.
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WOMAN
Join us next time when we see if Elliot and Iris are wowed or overwhelmed with Officelab’s concept book. Do Dominic and Lesley really have a strong grasp around the philosophy and culture of yarns and knitting?
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