E-Commerce

Before it's conception Funthyme was nothing but a blurred medley of ideas. All I knew is that I wanted to make a living for myself through cooking for other people outside of the restaurant trade. I wanted to explore a business that incorporated supperclubs, concept food events and private and event catering.

At the early planning stage I was still working for a gastropub out in the Northamptonshire countryside so BrandKits arranged suitable times for what were a series of, at the time, very long distance conversations. These conversations aimed to establish exactly what I wanted to offer as a business and how I wanted this to be perceived both as a brand and online. This series of conversations, sometimes pushing over an hour and a half in duration, brought these ideas into life and gave them a solid structure. BrandKits helped me understand what I wanted to achieve as a business. They did this by researching my own market, understanding it and helping me in finding an original and profitable proposition to go to market with.

I was amazed at how far and how quickly my ideas and turned into a solid business proposition. I didn't expect this level of planning from BrandKits and for me it was invaluable. I had conducted my own research into similar business that I felt some affinity with. I shared these with BrandKits and from our work in the planning stage were able to move forward with various brand identity ideas. We were toying with two approaches. One being quite underground edgy to appeal to a younger and more urban market and one more clean and fresh to appeal to a broader and slightly more creative but corporate market. With all the planning in the bag and a couple of branding concepts in place BrandKits then had enough information to brief their designers. After a week or so the designers came back with a plethora of branding concepts. From here we made a shortlist and then a final decision.

What I really appreciate now (not so much at the time!) was how much BrandKits stress tested the name and my final decisions. They wanted me to be 110% certain I was making the right decision and that I was comfortable before moving forward to implement the design of the website and brand itself. This stress testing really built my confidence in the business and made me feel ready for the launch.

I'm delighted with the Funthyme site and have had countless complements on it's appearance. On the surface it seems like quite a simple reference site but when you dig deeper there is a booking system for my events, a blog I update regularly and a great gallery section. It's easy to navigate and fulfills it's purpose to draw in clients visually and then give them the confidence to get in touch and enquire about bookings.

Being a fairly basic in my IT knowledge I found, after some training with BrandKits, the system to be easy to use. Things took a little while at first but after a few weeks I was updating my blog, creating events, changing images and uploading literature with no trouble at all. BrandKits has always been on hand if i've ever get 'stuck'.