How It Started

Rhys Hoddinott – the owner of Leka Systems – contacted us having seen a video that we had produced for another company. From the initial phonecall with Rhys, we were intrigued with the ideas and approach that he wanted to take to gain a presence in a challenging market. We suggested a face-to-face meeting so that we could identify whether our businesses and approaches were a good fit for one another. 

Rhys was in the early stages of setting up Leka Systems as a company and wanted to get started by offering products to a saturated marketplace dominated by some huge companies. However, the product range was unique in its approach. It was a warm roof conservatory system that (amongst many other USPs) was lighter, better insulated and with a longer lifespan than anything else on the market. 

However, they were facing many problems in launching Leka Systems. Two of the main issues were: 

  • They only had prototypes of the roof and wanted to make sales from the concept of the roof initially and without any case studies in place. 
  • They had a limited budget in an industry dominated by some very large companies with huge marketing budgets who had real evidence of their products in real situations.

Leka Systems needed a creative business who would help them in their journey to progress from a startup nothing, to become a significant player in their industry.

Naturally, we were all in! We love working with businesses who put innovation first and Leka Systems were one of those rare companies who wanted to become disruptive within their marketplace through offering something better in a stagnant market. Leka Systems were also ambitious in spite of the difficulties they faced. For us it was a chance to provide genuine impact and test ourselves against others in an industry with almost unlimited resources.

How We Worked Together

Digital Strategy

In order to assist Leka Systems with their journey into becoming a disruptive presence we embarked on the following approach:

  • A discovery process that would enable us to fully understand the Leka brand personality, target audience and the objectives that the founders of the business had.
  • A video presentation to enable Leka Systems to fully articulate the multitude of benefits to their roofing systems. Something that could be used to inform their audience and could be promoted via marketing platforms and their eventual website.
  • A website that would form the backbone of their marketing efforts, generating and capturing leads for the business.
  • A paid advertising strategy that spoke directly to the homeowner audience and directed traffic towards the website, where we could better inform them on the benefits of the Leka System.

We initiated a relatively invisible process of discovery through a series of discussions with Leka Systems. We often run formal strategy workshops, however, in this instance we decided to approach Leka with a series of questions to get the answers that we needed. This approach was taken due to an evolving situation with the Leka product blueprint. We were then able to explore a digital strategy that suited Leka Systems and adapted to any small changes in direction.

Using the digital strategy that we and Leka Systems had evolved, we then worked the two deliveries (website and video) in parallel, creating a website prototype and a video storyboard. 

Video and Animation

The video was targeted towards companies within the fenestration industry and therefore exhibited a technical slant that would appeal to that market, explaining the various technical advances of the Leka System clearly. The video didn’t need to be heavily polished, but it did need to get across a message about the unique benefits of the system in the way that someone within the industry would understand. To do this we followed our video production process: 

  • Storyboarding – to understand the best messaging and animation shots for the target audience, this allowed for a lot of feedback and direction from Leka Systems.
  • Style frames – articulating the final look of the video without animation, again, enabling feedback and direction.
  • Rough draft – showing a rough render of the animation. At this stage we could make small amendments going forward as needed.
  • Final draft – the final video, allowing any minor final tweaks to text or imagery.

Website Design and Development

The website was directed towards communicating a message to homeowners, promoting case studies as the product was finally piloted and rolled out to homeowners. The message of the website was engineered towards those looking to improve their existing conservatory space, offering to turn it into a year round living space that is longer lasting than the competition. The website also had to facilitate fenestration companies looking to offer a more innovative and more effective solution to their customers.

As with the video we have a general process that we adopt for each website project and as ever, this worked very well for the Leka Systems project:

  • Sitemap – we visually mapped out the pages that would assist Leka Systems in launching their product and services.
  • Wireframes – next, we outlined sketches to discuss best layout, navigation and messaging.
  • Prototype – once we had all of the information and feedback from the sitemaps and wireframes, we built a prototype of the final website, iterating on this until it became a rough draft of the final website.
  • GoLive – in this vital part of our process we ran through extensive quality assurance tests, ensuring the launch and delivery of the final website was as smooth as possible
  • Training – Finally, we trained Leka Systems on how to manage as much of the website as possible by themselves, giving them autonomy in adding and updating case studies.

What we helped to achieve

The digital strategy that we assisted Leka Systems in creating was immediately successful. It was backed up by a (at the time) leading video animation and website that served to capture interest and generate leads right away. 

Rhys and Lou (the Leka System founders) were amazing and worked tirelessly to market and install their product. The resulting video and website that we created became incredibly powerful sales tools for them. They managed to make those initial sales and then fulfilled a strong portfolio of case studies. Rhys often remarked that the video animation made introductions and eventual sales to fenestration companies almost effortless. The website then further assisted this face-to-face sales approach by supplementing a paid advertising strategy, generating leads back onto the website and informing the primary target audience in a way that spoke to them clearly.

The product that Leka Systems offered was superior to those around it and this made our job pleasurable and clearer in assisting with a workable strategy. Leka Systems were also a very forward thinking business and open to new ideas/suggestions. All of this combined to make up a strategy and a delivery that worked particularly well. 

Leka Systems went from strength-to-strength, punching a hole in their industry and forcing some very, very big companies to react. Their disruptive presence has only just started.

In summary Leka Systems have transitioned from a startup with nothing tangible to show into a multi six figure turnover business in a very short space of time (relatively speaking). They are punching a hole in an industry dominated by companies with turnovers many times in excess of their own, yet, they continue to win market share. They have a core brand that is authentic and thrives through innovation. We hope to stay with them on this exciting ride for a long time to come.