We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Meaghan Barry and Lilian Crum a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Meaghan and Lilian, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
This question has become one of the best conversation starters for us. Almost every client has asked us this at some point. The truth is that when we decided to start a design studio, there was not any particular name that called to us. Instead of brainstorming, we decided to use a random word generator while sitting side-by-side. “Unsold” was maybe the fourth word to come up, and once it flashed across our screen, both of us had a positive reaction. We liked that it is not a word that you hear often, so it’s recognizable and memorable; it also meant that all the website and social media handles were available (Instagram was juuuust getting off the ground in 2013 when we launched). “Unsold” as a descriptor of us felt like it matched; a little diamond-in-the-rough (why our logo is that shape), a little underdog, and not overly corporate. One of our clients once described it as “crust punk”, which made us laugh because looking at the two of us, we aren’t crust punk at all, but we do both carry that rebellious spirit on the inside. We still dream about creating a product line that has tags that say “unsold” on them – we laughed about it in 2013 and need to follow through on that still ten years later.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Since 2013, Detroit-based Unsold Studio has specialized in branding, design, and consulting for clients such as Bea’s Squeeze, Bombshell Treat Bar, Cranbrook Art Museum, InsideOut Literary Arts, Michigan Opera Theatre, Midtown Detroit Inc. and more. Our past branding, messaging, and packaging projects have garnered attention from press and awards, such as both partners (Meaghan and Lilian) being selected as Crain’s Detroit Business’ “Notable Women in Design”, and Oakland County’s “40 under 40”. Both of us hold our Master’s degrees in design, and continue teaching graphic design at southeast Michigan universities.
At Unsold Studio, we believe in the goals and values of small businesses and community-based organizations, and that is why we choose to serve them. Our firm only collaborates with partners and clients that we can morally, ethically, and full-heartedly “get behind”. We bring our clients into the fold of our small agile team, which was built on the foundation of our friendship. Our close working dynamic allows us to really learn our client’s business and determine how design can deliver the results they are looking for. We’ve worked with most of our clients over many years and many projects, and are proud to be seen as an extension of their teams.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
In 2015, a local architect we look up to connected us with one of their national clients to possibly do work for their upcoming Detroit location. We’d only been in business for a couple of years and had not yet landed a client at this scale. We wanted to land the job, but we also didn’t want to embarrass the architect who’d gone out on a limb to recommend us. As a small two-person team, we often feel like we are overlooked for the bigger, flashier teams, despite that we provide equal (if not better) design services, great consistent customer service (you’re always working with the two of us on every project), and we’re more affordable because we do not carry the overhead of those huge firms. Sometimes being perceived as small by national clients means you get passed on for projects, so we knew we had to pitch the client in a different way.
Instead of making a highly polished visual presentation, we created a beautiful handmade accordion fold booklet on super soft paper that would fit perfectly in the client founder’s shirt pocket that outlined our vision for the project. Our decision to do this was because we knew their business was more analog and hand-crafted, and this would align better with their values. It also would stand out from what those big design firms would be doing who we were competing against. When we handed them the booklet, we couldn’t tell if this would be a success or an epic fail. A few days after that meeting, we got the news we’d been selected for the job. Throughout the project, the founder did keep that booklet in his shirt pocket and referenced it until the pages were worn.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
The most effective strategy for growing our clientele is treating our clientele and networks well! We get 90% of our business from word-of-mouth. We love when someone tells us they heard about us as a recommendation from one of our current clients – it’s the biggest compliment we can receive!
Contact Info:
- Website: unsoldstudio.com
- Instagram: @unsoldstudio