We publish our rate because you should not have to sit through a call to find out whether you can afford us.
£100 a day. Everything below is that number multiplied out. We sell time in weeks rather than hours, and the figure is agreed before anything starts. If the work takes longer than we judged, that is our problem rather than a conversation in week three.
What things cost
A week. £500. Five days. Enough to settle a question the company has been arguing about, write the pitch, or fix the positioning.
Two to three weeks. £1,000 to £1,500. The usual length. An identity, a site, a campaign, a prototype.
A month. £2,000. Build work, film, anything with manufacture or third parties in it. Longer than a month is quoted the same way, by the day.
A standing day each week. £400 a month. Minimum three months. For founders who need a second head rather than a deliverable. Thirty days’ notice either way.
Most of what we do lands between £500 and £1,500. One week is the smallest engagement we take, because anything shorter costs more in setting it up than it returns.
What moves the number
How much is unknown when we start. How many people it needs. How fast you need it. Whether the work depends on third parties we cannot control.
Speed is the expensive one. Compressing three weeks into one is charged at £150 a day, because it means turning other work away.
What is not included
[Photography, paid media, licences, print, manufacture, hosting and domains.] These are passed on at cost. We do not mark up third party spend, and we tell you the likely figure before you commit rather than after.
Where a job needs a specialist we do not have in house, we will say so early and quote their time separately. At our rate there is no margin to absorb someone else’s, and we would rather be straight about that than pad the estimate.
Terms
Half to hold the dates, half on delivery. For a one-week engagement that is £250 up front. The deposit is what reserves the time, and we book few weeks at once, so it is the only thing that secures a start date.
Payment plans on request. Ask. We have done it and it has never been a problem.
Moving dates. Two weeks’ notice and we will move you at no cost. Later than that and the deposit holds the original slot, because the time is already gone.
If it is not working. If we get two days in and conclude we are the wrong studio for the job, we stop and refund the balance. That has happened. Both sides were better off.
Paying for the outcome instead
Some work is easier to price by what it produces than by how long it takes. Where that is true, we will quote a figure for the finished thing and carry the risk of it running long ourselves.
Positioning, settled. £600. The argument ends, and you have the document to prove it. Identity, delivered. £1,400. Assets, rules, templates, in your hands and usable without us. Site, live. £1,600. Written, designed, built and switched on, and you can edit it. Pitch, ready. £700. Deck, one-pager and a rehearsal against real questions. Supplier found and contracted. £1,200. Sourced, compared, negotiated, signed.
These sit slightly above the day-rate equivalent, and that difference is the point. You are buying certainty about the number, and we are taking the risk that the job is harder than it looked.
Putting our fee behind the result
On some engagements we will hold part of the fee back and take it only if the thing works.
The usual shape is a reduced base fee, around [sixty per cent] of the normal price, with the balance payable on a single agreed trigger. Because we are carrying the risk, the combined figure is higher than the straight quote, typically by [a third].
Example. A grant or tender application: [£800] base, [£1,200] on award. If it fails, that is what it cost you. If it lands, you paid [£2,000] for something worth considerably more.
Three conditions, all of them non-negotiable:
The trigger has to be measurable, dated, and something we substantially control. A tender won. A supplier contract signed at or below a target price. A site live and converting above an agreed rate by an agreed date. We do not take a fee on your revenue six months after we have gone, because by then the result belongs to you.
Not on a first engagement. This structure needs trust running both directions, and neither of us has it yet on day one.
Not on fundraising. Fees contingent on money raised carry regulatory problems in the UK, and we stay away from them entirely. We will help you build the pitch at the ordinary rate.
If you want to propose a structure of your own, do. The worst outcome is a founder deciding they cannot afford the work when there was a shape that suited us both.
Two questions we get asked
Do you work for equity? [Rarely, and only on work we would take at full price anyway. Ask, but expect a no.]
Is it cheaper if we commit to more? No. Volume discounts are a way of buying your future work at today’s price, and they make the studio worse at saying no. Book again when you need us.
If the numbers do not work
Some of the most useful calls we have end with us telling a founder to spend the money on something else, or to do it themselves and send it to us for an hour of scrutiny instead. That call is free and the advice is real.