BUSINESS OVERVIEW
The Team
The Digital COW founders are James Coverdale, Jonathan Oakley and
Darren White and the company’s name is derived from the initials of
each of our surnames; COW is Coverdale – Oakley – White. The
business presently is a joint responsibility setup where each of the
members share the workload and roles within the business. As the
business grows there will be need to hire extra staff to take control of
the practical work whilst the aim is for us as founders to take on a more
managerial and supervision role.
Our Business
Digital COW is currently a small scale partnership that doesn’t even
have fixed premises. Because of the structure of the business, the team
can work on projects for the business individually using their own
resources at their own homes or places of work and share them via the
business’ website and at face-to-face meetings held on a weekly basis.
At present the team members are in contact via email and telephone on
an almost daily basis and meet face to face once per week in order to
officially catch up with different aspects of the business. Because our
business is a partnership, should any member leave for any reason, the
business would not suffer in terms of collapse. Instead it would have to
be dissolved and rebuilt, either as a two member partnership or should
we decide to bring in someone new to help run the business then this
could be considered depending on the particular circumstances.
What We Offer
Digital COW is a web based company that will offer customers with a
range of highly detailed CG models at a competitive price. Our native
software packages are Autodesk Softimage and Autodesk 3DS Max
which allows us to export our CG models as OBJ files that are easily
imported into many 3D packages in use by most 3D animators,
designers, architects and so on.
SERVICE PROVIDED
At present we are building a portfolio of various CG models from
vehicles, buildings and scenery objects to organic models such as
people, animals, non-specific ‘creatures’ and much more that customers
can purchase for a small fee, some of our lower polygon models will be
provided free of charge in order to remain competitive and to promote
future sales. However we will also offer a bespoke service where we will
model anything that the customer requests, to their own exacting
specifications. This service will allow customers to purchase their own
personally designed models, but will usually cost a little more depending
on the scale of the project and any deadline they may have as more
time and resources are dedicated to the production of such a model.
We wanted to create something that had a more professional layout that
would be set out more like a shop front for our services and so rather
than relying on advertising as a source of income for our business, we
decided to appeal to a higher-end market providing high quality models
at a competitive price as well as providing some free models.
We intend to offer three unique selling points (USP) for our business to
distinguish us from the many other sites out there.
At this moment in time, because we are a smaller scale outfit who
have low running costs, due to us not having a premises and us
already having our own hardware and software setup, we can pass
our savings onto our customers by not charging as much as some of
the better established companies, whilst still providing a quality
service. As the business grows and our customer base grows we
would need to employ more staff to cope with the workload and so
costs would likely increase, however we feel that the range of
services that we could then provide would make it so that the costs to
our customers would still remain competitive, the overall aim is to
avoid having to reside in a single place of work so as to avoid rental
costs, bills and travel costs to keep our outgoings at a minimum and
our profits to a maximum.
We intend to keep close ties with Teesside University, after
graduation, so that we can keep our business very open to freelance
work and where necessary we can outsource some of our projects to
current students who are prepared to offer their time to undertake
some of the modelling or texturing work for our bespoke service and
we would be prepared to offer a large percentage of the fee for such
a project to the student or students involved in producing the work.
This would mean that we can not only offer services for our
customers but also provide students with experience of working for a
client whilst still at University, giving them something to add to their
CV/portfolio. These ties would also work in our favour in that we
might be able to hire those that have worked with us during their
studies once they have graduated, as our business and customer
base begins to grow.
A third selling point is that unlike most other websites that offer
similar services, we do not require customers to create an account in
order to download our free models. These models will be readily
available and instantly downloadable. We would however require
customers who are buying our models or using the bespoke service
to provide us with some details for our records as well as the
necessary payment details and should they wish to create an account
for ease of access during future business, this option will be made
available.
Based on the research into existing companies we have realised that
we can’t offer a definitive price for each model. For instance the models
provided by Turbo Squid range from free to thousands of dollars in cost.
We intend to offer a range of free low-poly models for customers to
download but as for the higher detailed models we intend to price them
as they are made depending on complexity and detail and base our prices
below pre-existing examples of the same models from elsewhere in an
attempt to undercut the competition initially and because we wont be
relying on the business as a main source of income during the early
stages we believe that we can quite easily afford to do this in order to
compete in the market.
View our marketing materials including business cards, advertising banners and website designs HERE
