Client Diaries · Chapter 01

The First Close

Standing with Ayşegül Ikna in her store at Citizen Supply, Ponce City Market, the day the first client closed

Thank you Ayşegül for this opportunity

After six months of trying to close my first client

With no testimonials to show and no work to trust

So I walked into Ponce City Market

Went to sell a website

Ended up selling an experience

Ayşegül Ikna campaign image: model in an upcycled patchwork bucket hat and pink shirt

My contribution

Client onboarding & legalities

Consulting solutions

Media & drone videography

Management & operations

My contribution

Client onboarding & legalities

Consulting solutions

Media & drone videography

Management & operations

Sustainable fashion · Ponce City Market · Atlanta · The first client I ever closed

3→1

Her shop went live

Instagram shop, Facebook shop and the website all selling the same catalog, and every payment landing in one Square ledger.

30%

More sales

Increase in monthly sales within months of launch, from a business with no online revenue at all when we walked in.

Most viewed video

The drone film I shot inside her runway show became the most watched piece of content the brand has ever had.

The first one

Every business owner knows the feeling of closing their first client

Mine was Ayşegül Ikna, a Turkish fashion designer working out of Citizen Supply in Ponce City Market. She takes men's clothing nobody wanted and rebuilds it into premium womenswear, by hand, one piece at a time.

It took months of bugging her and a stack of shameless follow ups. In the end she said yes to a single sentence.

Ayşegül Ikna in her studio at Citizen Supply, Ponce City Market

“You have an amazing store and an amazing brand. Digitally you do not exist, and it is costing you thousands of dollars.”
The line that closed her

That worked because it was not a pitch. It was the thing she already knew and had never said out loud.

Walking in

We were five people

I walked in expecting smooth sailing. We were going to make a website.

Me
Sales, client relationship, onboarding
Ayush Basu
Partner, creative direction
Daksha
Head of development
J
Janvi
Head of design
Tanvi
Social media, client communications

Spoiler

It wasn't

To actually grow you have to sit in the uncomfortable zone for a while. Three things showed up that were never in the scope.

Onboarding did not exist yet

Invoices, service agreements, the legal contracts that protect her money and protect our time. None of it existed at ROV because she was the first. I sat down and built the whole paper trail from scratch, and every client we have signed since has come through that same door.

The media was not good enough

You cannot sell a premium garment with a photo taken on a phone in bad light. We started with stills. Then we shot a full fashion walk. Then I put a drone inside her runway show at Ponce City Market, which turned into the most viewed video the brand has ever had.

She did not need a website

She needed somewhere to sell. Halfway through I stopped calling it a website build, because that framing was making us solve the wrong problem. We built the whole digital experience around the sale instead.

Everyone experiences an event differently. Here it is through my lens.

The runway show at Ponce City Market. I flew the drone inside the room.

The promo that filled the room. Cut for the show, run on her channels in the week before the doors opened.

The solution

We didn't build her a website. We built her a whole digital experience

Her money had three front doors and no hallway. Instagram sold, the shop sold, the site was supposed to sell, and none of them knew the others existed. So we drew the hallway first and built to it.

aysegulikna.com

Custom built, not a template. The story, the collection and the checkout finally in one place, so somebody who found her on Instagram could actually finish the thought.

Square

Every sale, whichever door it came through, lands in the same ledger. One catalog, one checkout, one number to look at on a Monday morning.

All payments on one platform.

What shipped

Her whole digital front door

Visit the siteframes from the build

Ayşegül Ikna design frame: the upcycled materials statement above a three-up product grid — The promise
High-quality upcycled materials and expert construction. Luxurious and sustainable, in the same sentence.

Ayşegül Ikna design frame: featured pieces of the week, three editorial product shots — Featured pieces of the week
A merchandising slot she can run herself, so the front page is never stale.

Ayşegül Ikna design frame: The Art of Craftsmanship, with her illustrations beside the story copy — The story block
Her own illustrations sit next to the copy, because the drawings are where every piece starts.

Ayşegül Ikna with guests celebrating the fashion show launch at Ponce City Market

Models presenting Ayşegül Ikna's collection inside the Ponce City Market store

Result

30%

Increase in monthly sales within months of launch, from a business that had no online revenue at all when we walked in.

“Everything finally looks like it came from one brain. It all tells the same story now.”

Ayşegül Ikna, founder and designer

What the first one taught me

The follow up is the job

I did not close her with a better deck. I closed her because I was still there months later, being politely annoying, when she was finally ready.

Close on their problem

Nobody wakes up wanting a website. She woke up knowing something was leaking. My job was to name the leak out loud before somebody else did.

The deliverable is never it

She hired us for a site and got contracts, a drone shoot and a payment system. The scope grows every time, and the good version of that is deciding on purpose which parts to grow into.

Want the next one to be yours?

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