OxyGo® makes portable oxygen equipment, and Victoria Marquard-Schultz has been running the show, from a lean team to a company doing over $65 million in revenue. She didn’t need to be convinced about the importance of great design and marketing. What she needed was the right team to lead, manage, and own the results.
Before working together, OxyGo had cycled through a couple of freelance designers. The first was more production help than anything. Victoria and her team were doing most of the thinking, and he was executing. The second was someone they clicked with better, but her part-time schedule was tough to navigate. Neither situation was sustainable.
Hiring in-house design and marketing looked like the obvious next move. But the math didn’t work. A junior designer out of school would still require benefits, software licenses, and training. Someone with the experience they actually needed was going to cost high five figures, maybe six. And making the case internally for a full-time marketing hire was a hard sell. Getting someone to approve a graphic designer was a lot more doable.
Our engagement started with a single print project and grew quickly from there. Business cards, magazines, website design, trade show graphics, vendor contacts, production coordination — we took on mission-critical tasks that would have otherwise landed on the marketing coordinator’s plate, or required them to find and vet someone new for each job.
The retained relationship turned out to be perfect for both sides. Victoria knew our time was booked, and we grew to know their suite of businesses as well as any other internal team member. There was no scrambling for availability, no re-explaining the brand every time, no renegotiating what “the project scope” was. Everything just clicked.
Over time, positive feedback started coming from outside the company. People in med-tech were telling OxyGo that their marketing looked better than the public companies they compete with. It gave instant credibility to their brand, allowing them to confidently pursue larger contracts and opportunities.
Victoria is now CEO, and we continue to support OxyGo across all three of its divisions on ongoing marketing initiatives.
TL;DR
"Right away, you were part of our business ...
And because you’re also a founder and an owner, you get it. I don’t really consider you a freelancer. You treat it as a business, and that cuts down on so much of the back-and-forth and puts us ahead of everyone else.”
