Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi S-Nation!

Thanks for looking and helping me out. I'm looking to start a business selling natural and organic soaps. One of my highest start-up costs will be professional branding, logo-creation, etc. And I do want to go to established agencies for this, as I hope to position my brand as "designer".

I know that these costs can vary across the level of experience, etc. -- if I wanted a logo, packaging, branding image, do you know what amount I should expect? Or what I could do to lower the potential asking price?

Thank you all! I'm working off of next to nothing, and so any cost-saving tips would be much appreciated!!

If you are looking to cut on cost, I would suggest having a freelancer work on your logo as opposed to the established agencies.  I know a lot of business owners who have used freelancers and yet, they have been successful in having a professional logo created for them.  You just have to find the right freelancer.

Packaging is a different matter.  If you want it professionally done, I would suggest going with the bigger companies as opposed to the smaller ones.

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Kate

MedifastHealth.org

I wouldn't make branding as my cost priority because if your products are good, people tend to remember them. You need to know that as a startup, the more important aspects are marketing and sales. Branding comes later when your business slowly grows.

As for logos, have you tried some of the crowdsourcing services out there like CrowdSpring and 99Designs? With these services, you get a lot of designers to design for you at a fixed rate. Best of all, you can have a feel of what your logo should be like by looking at their submissions.

I think good reviews of your product and word of mouth is better than branding. Although for a soap product, packaging is really important.

Marketing is by far the most important part of any start up... The greatest product or service in the world will fall flat on it's face without a buyer.

I find it funny that when a business struggles.. the first budget cut is marketing and advertising. It also seems to be the one that that doesn't receive a lot of focus during a start up.