Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our client had to cease all in-person music education operations, resulting in a decrease of school partnerships. In response to this, the client pivoted towards consolidating their nationwide program into five key markets, focusing on deeper market penetration rather than widespread market presence across the country.

As a one-person business, our client faces challenges in maintaining a structured and consistent workflow for their social media accounts. While the client posts frequently on various platforms, they have not fully utilized algorithms to optimize the visibility and reach of their posts. Additionally, the client relies on their understanding of customer demand rather than leveraging customer data when introducing new products or flavors. While the client already possesses a certain level of social media and marketing capabilities, Rem can provide expertise and maximize the benefits of these strategies. Through our guidance and support, the client can enhance their use of algorithms, leverage customer data for product introductions, and further optimize their social media and marketing efforts to achieve even greater success.

Despite the challenging circumstances brought on by the pandemic, our client, a family-owned smokehouse BBQ restaurant, persevered by securing a loan from a local COVID-19 emergency program. This provided much-needed financial stability that enabled our client to pivot and focus on opening a new location. However, after relocating to another state, our client encountered several challenges in remotely managing the original location. These included staffing shortages, operational inefficiencies, and a need for standardized policies and procedures for effective communication. Our team's top priorities were to address these issues and ensure a seamless transition to the new location before its grand opening.

The client's business, which provides personalized nanny placement services to families, corporate childcare programs, and events, faced numerous challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. With parents understandably hesitant to have strangers in their homes, demand for nanny placements dwindled. As restrictions eased, the client struggled to establish themselves in a crowded market, with well-established agencies already dominating the field. Paid marketing campaigns failed to yield results, leaving the client unsure of how to acquire new business. Additionally, an SEO report on their website proved overwhelming for the client, who lacked the time and resources to apply its findings effectively.

The COVID pandemic heavily disrupted our clients normal operations, as they are primarily a brick and mortar retailer who sought to build a community through hosting a multitude of in person physical events. Forced to shut their doors, the client was able to transition to hosting virtual events and redesign their website, they struggled to facilitate signups for these new events and find a return on their new marketing spend.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our clients laundry’s business, putting pressure on the family-owned enterprise to pivot and find alternative ways to maintain profitability. Our client approached REM with the idea to expand into a laundry subscription service tailored toward college students, as the laundromat is located near multiple college campuses. They asked for a comprehensive business plan for the expansion of the company with the goal of securing funding from investors and initiating operations. 

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the local grocery market where the majority of the client’s products were sold was permanently closed. Thus, the client looked to transition to a more e-commerce focused strategy, selling directly to customers. While the client had already set up an online store, they were struggling to drive traffic to the store. Furthermore, the client started losing money due to the high shipping cost associated with refrigerated products and therefore had to limit themselves to only shipping orders within their region.

Prior to the global pandemic, our client operated on an extremely local basis, receiving funds largely through grants. Since COVID-19, our client realized that they are lacking an online presence, which they fear could harm them specifically in terms of visibility to the community and potential Donors. The client voiced major concerns about creating a social media presence, highlighted by a lack of experience in running social media on any platform.

In order to keep up with rising demand, our client had to increase their number of employees. By increasing his staff, the client was faced with a variety of organizational issues. The main issue being the lack of a formal training process for his new employees.

Our client increased the number of products shipped, donations, and partnerships rapidly over the past two years. In preparation for the continued growth our main focus was easing our client’s “growing pains”.  We accomplished this by digitizing the bookkeeping, analyzing the financial history and implementing accounting tools, as well as conducting best-practices research to provide strategic recommendations for scaling successfully.

Due to COVID-19, the client has had to make significant adjustments in how they were getting their revenue. They were no longer able to rely on their typical revenue drivers. Instead, the client had to pivot to virtual or smaller in-person classes. The client tasked Rem and Company with providing suggestions for a marketing campaign to attract new customers to their new offerings, using insight from their target customer base.

Our client had wanted to move away from items with smaller profit margins like clothing and shoes. The reduced foot traffic as a result of the pandemic accelerated the need for this transition. Our team determined that first and foremost, we needed to redesign the website, change how the client sold products, and streamline their inventory management. Regardless of what the client wanted to sell; these were essential steps for their business to succeed in pandemic times.

Since our client is not yet in the position to compensate employees part of their community and responsible for creating product ratings, the venture’s continued growth and long-term success was dependent on and structured around a student volunteer model. Due to the client’s growth and diverse offerings, they needed a reliable structured and people-focused approach towards recruitment strategies.

The client needed to consolidate their financial data from the previous years, and create assumptions about expenses as well as revenues moving forward. Some pain points for our client was the fact that they weren’t able to easily predict revenues because they come from donations. With this in mind, our client needed to heavily analyze past years’ donations as well as expenses in order to create strong assumptions.

Our team set out to address the short-term goals of social media strategy and push our client on their long-term strategy of donor engagement. We focused on the Rem and Company pillars of Strategy, User Experience, and Marketing as we crafted our outputs. We presented strategies, systems, and outputs around a short-term and long-term goal.

In light of recent events regarding issues of social justice in the United States, our client was motivated to make a concerted effort to recruit a more diverse workforce in their yoga studio. The yoga industry struggles with this diversity problem as a whole, as it is largely dominated by white females, and industry leaders are working to make the necessary changes along with our client.