As designers, there’s nothing more rewarding than working with a fledgling business, designing their brand and marketing materials from the ground up. When a business is this young, we notice, there’s often little distinction between the business and the business owner: their hopes and dreams are intertwined, and as we work to understand who the business is in order to define it visually, we ultimately end up learning a great deal about the client. As you can imagine, we get invested in their success on a personal level because, after all, we’re a small shop and we know what it’s like to be starting out.
Which brings me to Garden Gate Delivery, a new sustainable grocery delivery business in Ithaca that we recently had the great pleasure of working with here at Ancient Wisdom. Marlo Capoccia, owner of Garden Gate, came to us needing the works: a logo, an e-commerce website, business cards, postcards, letterhead, a truck decal, posters and a template design for her e-newsletter. As Garden Gate’s project lead, you can imagine I spent quite a bit of time getting to know Marlo and her new business; throughout this process, in fact, we became very close friends. As excited as I was to launch Garden Gate’s new website back in February and see this new business take off for the first time, this was one project that I had a hard time parting with. After all, it’s client relationships like these that keep us motivated, creative, and keep us loving what we do. Luckily, though, it wasn’t like I’d never see Marlo again. On the contrary, I’d be seeing her once a week from then on. Because I was about to become of Marlo’s first and most loyal customers.
Even more satisfying than working closely with a new business on a project is being able to experience the success of that business first-hand once they leave our shop. As a customer of Garden Gate, the food that Marlo has been delivering to my door week after week has been incredibly fresh and delicious, brought to me with a higher level of customer service than I had imagined possible. She is doing an amazing job. Of course, Marlo came to us with a really solid business plan and a kindheartedness all her own, so I couldn’t possibly take credit for the success of her business. But just knowing that I had something to do with getting it off the ground is incredibly fulfilling. It’s always funny the way things come around full-circle in a small town like Ithaca. In this case, I am just reminded of why it is I do what I do every day.
Please look for my next post, in which I will be sharing a list of my Top 10 recommended products from www.gardengatedelivery.com.
People may call us a crunchy, liberal folk, but my heart leapt with pride to be an Ithacan at the annual Earth Day celebration at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market this Sunday. It’s not what you might expect. Sure, there’s the bellydancing vegans, the solar powered folk band performance, and the ubiquitous drum circle (all admittedly a bit granola), but you’ll also find some of coolest people you’ll have a chance to meet doing some pretty awesome things! Like Marlo of Garden Gate Delivery who was doing a blind milk taste test (Evan’s non-homogenized milk vs. Wegman’s organic milk) Benj and Julie of Dovetail Builders who were showing off all of the beautiful, sustainable carpentry work they do, or Jennifer Dotson, the brain behind Ithaca CarShare, who was taking her very first enrollments! Not to mention all the cool stuff I learned about the composting with worms, humanure, the Locavore project, compact fluorescents, etc. And to top it all off, I had the pleasure of witnessing the 4-H rubber ducky race down Fall Creek on my way down to the event. Nothing like seeing kids jumping into the creek after those little yellow guys and seeing real ducks get very, very confused by a swarm of rubber ones. There’s no place like Ithaca.
