Quality Business Systems is a small local retailer offering a number of different office products to their clients in medical, legal, accounting, educational and governmental offices. First, they offer high end electronic records software and hardware systems; secondly, they sell traditional paper recordkeeping sytems and furniture at the lowest cost in the area; third, they offer storage for their clients' old and inactive files. In addition, they offer consulting services to help clients save space or time by streamlining records management.
      They were having difficulty managing their image with the broad variety of product offerings, and they suffered from a problem all too typical: their clients, most of whom bought only one kind of product or service, did not know the full range of their offering.
      We first addressed their name, which was a bit long and sounded very generic. We introduced a now logo which shortened the name to QBS, leaving the full name in the signature which normally appeared with the logo.
      We then tried to address the problem of having a high end consulting business and a low end commodity products business side by side. After all, it's difficult to sell a customer up to high end consulting when they know you as a file folder and label store. Using QBS as the fulcrum, we established satellite divisions: QBS Bargain Bin as the low end commodity division; QBS Office Xtension as the records storage division; And finally QBS Engineered Workspace as the consulting and high end electronic systems division. This allowed a bit of separation among divisions and made cross selling of their services to a single client more palatable.
      We created an on-line store for QBS Bargain Bin and promoted the site as offering the lowest cost paper and label products in the market. The objective was to make the Bargain Bin system as hands-free and low cost as possible, since it is a low margin commodity business. The visual image we established for Bargain Bin was rough and cheap, reflecting the low cost positioning of the division. This contrasted with the high end image for Engineered Workspace, which was concise and professional, and rich in photography, featuring an engineering style grid in the background.
      Their consulting business offered space planning, but much more, since both time and space savings could be generated by improvements in recordkeeping systems or off-site storage of inactive records. This combination of space planning, ergonomics, furniture customization and information management we titled Engineered Workspace, with the descriptor: "Furniture, people, information and time - the four dimensions of the 21st century office."
      A four panel color brochure was produced for the the Engineered Workspace division, along with a three dimensional folding cube which was used as a presentation tool. Cheaper flyers printed on in-house printers and easily updated, were produced for Office Xtension and Bargain Bin. Flyers and ads were also produced to take advantage of specific one-time opportunities.
      Since the market segments for the various divisions were clear and limited in quantity, and we had good mailing lists for all, direct mail was a natural medium for promotion. Color postcards, cheap and of fairly good quality, were printed using internet gang-printing services. A series of four cards was sent for each of the major segments: medical, legal, accounting and government.