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Lip Loi Creative portfolio: questions answered
What people ask me about Lip Loi Creative portfolio, and my answers. The project itself has its own page.
What happened after the Olympic champion's brand deck reached sponsors and corporate buyers?
He signed with a major outdoor clothing brand soon after, and I cannot name it. His speaking work grew too, and he was booked for the next 18 months. That is the response I watch for. The job of a brand deck is to let the right sponsors and buyers say yes without effort. Inside a short stretch he had a clothing partner and a calendar with no open dates.
How did the team trim the deck to what a buyer could book?
First we needed our clients talking. Every specific detail they gave taught us more about who they are behind the public face. After that we trimmed the deck round by round, down to the story a buyer could book.
What came of the golf creator's brand strategy commercially?
About four months in, he signed with a golf club company no one expected, and with a clothing company on the rise. He is an influencer, so leaving the golf team he had been with set off a big fuss. How much credit goes to the positioning? Honestly, it cannot be fully separated. That is the old argument about branding against marketing against sales: which one closed it? What I can say is that the positioning handed him a narrative he did not have. The group he left was a team brand. We turned the focus to his own brand, and that surely played a part.
How did you keep to one garment when the larger apparel line was also part of the ambition?
By taking one garment at a time and choosing the right one to start. The polo matters most in what a golfer wears. It carries the logos, and it must fit well and perform best. Fabric, gussets and seams count there, since they either free a swing or restrict it. So the polo came first and had to be right. Everything else, pants, shorts, caps and tees, waited its turn.
Who did what on the golf apparel deck?
I set the direction and the story, and the studio handled the craft. The decision I made before anything was designed was one thing at a time, golf polo first.
What did you put in front of the team so the apparel work would not slide back into generic visual branding?
We made the players show us instead. Every golfer brought a favorite shirt, and around half brought the same one, an older golf polo from a large athletic brand that I had owned too. The reason was the cut: where the seams sat, the gussets, and the give through the chest and shoulders so it moves with you. A good cut makes the game easier.
What changed in the final specification after the garment comparison?
Price, mostly. By the end we were deciding which materials could be swapped for cheaper versions. The garment depends heavily on how it is cut and how it performs, and we wanted a price that made sense. We cut the anti-wicking spray that many of these fabrics get. It is nearly worthless, because a poor application just washes out.
What changed when the capabilities deck went to market?
We built the deck to sell our own labor. Between our projects, we can step in quickly with a small footprint, which keeps crews working so we do not lose them in the gaps. It connected us with Habitat for Humanity locally. The best outcome was a takeover. Downtown, a general contractor had trades leave a large new steakhouse at the convention center, with six rooms plus a bar and a sushi area. The contractor saw the deck, phoned us about the labor hole, and we took the job and finished it. Takeovers happen to us often.
When trades had walked off a job, what did you have to assess before accepting responsibility for finishing it?
First you write a very detailed work scope. Here that was not enough. The earlier work was too tangled for us to own, because nobody could say which work was good and which was not. We normally do fixed bids. This one we ran entirely on time and materials. Our people went in right away on time and materials, managed by our site superintendent. That was the only way to take it on. The client got crews moving at once, and we never had to guarantee work we did not do.
How fast were crews on site after the call?
Right away, which is what the deck promised. Our labor gets sold into the open stretches between our own jobs, so when the phone rang we had crews waiting for work who could show up fast. Pricing a fixed bid on work nobody could inspect was off the table. We put crews on site on time and materials under our superintendent and started. I cannot give you an exact number of days. What I can say is the crews were ours and they were available, and that availability is the entire offer.