Kill Jellie goes global with Export Communications Review
A UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) Export Communications Review helped children’s product company Kill Jellie expand globally
Kill Jellie lunchpack
Kill Jellie was founded in 2010 by Gill Hayward and Kellie Forbes. The co-founders created their own products, children’s backpacks, lunchboxes and accessories, and devised an innovative distribution channel with advertisements screened on the Nickelodeon TV channel driving customers directly to their website, YUUworld.com.
Gill and Kellie found out about UKTI from one of their friends. “We wanted to expand internationally,” explained Kellie, “and were advised of the great support network available through UKTI.” Because of Kill Jellie’s novel route to market, international expansion was relatively low risk but a clear and inviting website was going to be paramount.
The YUUworld website had been fundamental in the business’ UK success. However, before embarking on an international growth strategy, the co-founders were keen to revisit this. They wanted to refine website content, review the customer’s buying process and ensure it was the best it could be before investing in translations, and launching overseas
Through her UKTI International Trade Advisor, Kellie was introduced to Notburga Preining, a Consultant working for the Export Communications Review (ECR). ECR is a UKTI scheme which provides practical and impartial advice to help companies improve their communications with overseas markets. Each review is conducted by a communications expert and is matched to the company’s individual requirements.
Notburga spent a morning with Gill and Kellie and their technical web design team reviewing their current website strategy and proposed a comprehensive package of practical and useful improvements. After the meeting, Notburga sent through a step-by-step report detailing all the recommendations.
As a result, the website is now clearer, more informative and more suitable for an international audience. The buying process has been streamlined with fewer stages for a customer to complete, The content and wording have been simplified to be more easily acceptable to a non-native English audience, and the photographs demonstrate the products more visibly.
“Notburga also helped us with some really useful advice that we just didn’t see ourselves,” says Kellie. “She recommended that we secure web domains in our countries of interest before investors buy them to make money from us. The very next day, we learned that someone had already purchased our domain in one of our target markets and was trying to sell it back to us at an inflated price; we quickly heeded Notburga’s advice and bought key domain names whilst we still could!”