The brief
Kirsten Harvey renovated her own villa and spent fifteen months looking for lacework that was period-authentic, made to measure, and built to last. She could not find it, so she made it. Veranda Lacework Co makes fibre-reinforced composite lacework, fretwork, brackets, and corbels from more than thirty patterns drawn from New Zealand's Victorian and Edwardian heritage, delivered in fourteen days. The market did not know it existed, and most of the market did not know what to search for.
The thinking
This is not a crowded category, it is an underserved one. The job was to make people feel the problem before offering the answer. A renovated villa without lacework is ninety-five percent complete. New paint, new windows, garden sorted, and something is still off from the end of the driveway. So the brand runs on an analogy system for sensory incompleteness, one line per piece, never explained: a villa without lacework is a black dress without red lips.
The founder story carries the authority. Fifteen months of searching earns more trust than any credential, so credentials never appear. Facts do the selling: four times the life of timber, thirty-plus patterns, made to measure from three measurements, quotes in twenty-four hours.
The work
Brand identity system, The Plaque: oxblood, copper, and vellum, with Playfair Display italic doing the display work and a secondary ink system alternating beside it. A brand bible that anyone writing for the company works from, with the analogy library, the rhythm, and the never-say list. Website with the full pattern catalogue and a three-measurement quote form.
Then the engine. A go-to-market strategy validated against the financial model, three channels (organic social, Meta paid, and SEO), and a marketing automation build ahead of ads: quote confirmation, quote delivery, three follow-ups, retargeting for abandoned quotes, and order confirmation, all running through Airtable so the founder's production time stays on production. Two audiences, homeowner and trade, with separate messaging and journeys.