What we do
Whether you’re a start-up or already established and on your way to the stars, we tailor our full-service offering to your business. We understand that every business owner has their own unique needs.
With our in-house team of consultants, we can provide the solutions you’re seeking: business development, marketing strategy and execution, brand development, packaging and merchandising, operations and distribution management, robust business management systems, financial analysis and bottom-line growth.
Planning:
Corporate structure
Every business has to stare down the necessary evils of structure, administration and corporate governance, before it can turn and do what it’s really there for: to thrive and prosper. We offer the following corporate structure consulting services:
Business Licenses
We have a wealth of experience all over the world drafting, filing, negotiating licences – the passports to starting, let alone succeeding in business.
Tax Registration (US and International)
One of the two inevitabilities in life – we can take up your tax registration requirements and leave you ready to do business as any tax authority would like it.
Business Plan (Development)
Never write a business plan based on subjectivity alone. Objectivity spots the rabbit traps and sees the gaps in detail. Our expertise isn’t as much in writing business plans, as in re-writing them.
Financial Structure (Forecasting)
Don’t let the lifeblood of your business drain out through poorly structured systems. We have the skills and the qualifications to turn a house of cards into a castle.
Market Research
Desk research, drill-downs, qualitative focus groups, quantitative surveys, expert opinion; doing business without doing market research is a dangerous thing. Our in-house experts work with the best market researchers around to ensure your competitive advantage is secure.
Trademarks
Identity theft isn’t just a people thing. We know the domestic and international procedures and the continuously developing laws surrounding IP. Protecting your brand protects your business.
Legal (Contracting, Employee Manuals)
Turn to our in-house counsel for expert guidance and oversight on your business’ corporate law needs, whether you’re in the US, Europe, Asia or elsewhere.
Business Viability Statements
It’s not enough for your business to be fit for purpose today; can you demonstrate that you’re robust enough to weather future storms? A business viability statement isn’t just reassuring for you; it’s security for your customers too.
Minority Certifications
If you’ve earned it, claim it. In many countries around the world, being a minority-owned business is a hard-won privilege. We have years of experience securing the certification that recognises it and which brings its own rewards.
Setting the plan:
Operations and logistics
We all know the 6 ‘P’s of planning: Planning & Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Get these ducks in a row and you’ll be ready to go to market.
We offer the following operations & logistics consulting services:
Manufacturing Channels
Brand creation is just one of the facets of starting or enhancing your business, but what about the actual product itself? How do you make it, how do you produce it, how do you source it. Our team of experts can take your idea and turn it into a physical handheld product. We have the copackers, prototyping, contract manufacturing, and production line facilities to get your project over the finishing line. Copackers, prototyping, contract manufacturing, production line facility
State by State Registrations
Here’s some math: how many forms need filling for a single state registration? Multiply that by how many states there are. Then factor in how different their requirements are. The answer is scary, but someone with extensive experience can make the task seem like a junior school project.
International Registrations
See that map of the world? Imagine how much red tape there is out there. With our knowledge of product registration around the globe, we can find our way through the maze of bureaucracy with ease and help you start selling internationally far quicker.
On-Trade Off-Trade Accounts
Not for this website
Source manufacturing materials
If you don’t know what to look for, you’ll probably end up with something you don’t need and bang goes your profit. With connections all over the world and a clear understanding of the manufacturing process, we can help secure the materials you need.
Operational Plan
This is your business bible. Without it and without following it, there’s no guarantee of success. An operational plan contains your operational manuals, financial planning, your corporate organizational structure, your corporate governance framework. Stick to the script to enhance your chances and help you focus on the road ahead.
Distribution Plan
Are you ready to expand? Can you meet growing demand? Distribution is more than just securing shelf space. If you don’t build in scalability, you risk being unable to deliver. So it’s time to step back and look at your capacity, your production schedules, logistics capabilities and more besides.
Go-To-Market Strategy
You’ve poured your effort, time and money into your new product, but without a water-tight plan to take it to market, you may as well stay in bed. This is your launch feasibility study, the “how, where, when and how much” of putting your product in front of your customers. And as always, a healthy mix of subjectivity and objectivity will ensure no strategic stone is left unturned.
Shipping Resources
Your business is established, your product created, so it’s time to get it to your end users – the retailer, wholesaler, distributor or even the consumer. With years of experience dealing with shipping both in bulk and individually, we know our trains, planes and automobiles, as well as our ships. If you can’t ship on time, to budget and in one piece, you may as well leave it in the warehouse.
HR
Recruitment and selection; performance management; learning and development; succession planning; compensation and benefits. Running your business is one thing; running your people is another. Installing the right systems to ensure the right results from your staff is not a task for the time-poor.
Branding services
Your brand is your soul. The logo is just the hat you wear. Nail down your brand and everything that surrounds it and you’ll have created a solid hook to hang that hat on.
We offer the following brand crafting services:
Brand Identity Development
Just because you know everything about your brand, its deepest secrets and most intimate details, doesn’t mean your customer knows who you are and what you stand for. Working out those answers shouldn’t be an inside job. You need objectivity; someone to help you mold your brand into a powerful entity.
Brand Voice
Your confidence to one consumer may be complete arrogance to another. Finding the right balance to how you communicate – the language you use, the mood you present – can be the difference between creating a community around yourself and standing there all alone.
Brand Guidelines
Bet you didn’t even know you were breaking your own rules. And if you don’t know them, how can you expect your staff, your distributors, your agents to know them? A clear set of brand guidelines protects you from misrepresenting your brand and confusing your customers.
Packaging
That pack looked so good on screen; modern, stand out, a definite consumer magnet. Form has followed function for sure. But has it? Have you checked? Do you know how to? Have you asked a designer who’s put a hundred packs on shelf and watched them fly off it again? Do that before you go to market.
Point of Sale
You can’t relax once the customer is in store. The last mile is often the hardest in the sales process, and other brands can steal your limelight too easily. So make sure your store presence is enhanced, with effective visual merchandising, or risk disappearing into the “others” category.
Media
Shouting about yourself from the top of the wrong hill is a waste of time, money and breath. We know that the media landscape is changing all the time and we have a firm grasp of how. That means we can help you say the right thing, in the right place, at the right time to the right people.
Retail media
If I can’t see you on the digital shelf, you may as well not be there. Using retailers’ sites and apps to promote your brand means you’re talking to the right people when and where it matters. We work with the data to make sure it all stacks up.
PR
The right story in the wrong hands is a wasted opportunity. No story is even worse. They either make you look bad or invisible. PR helps create the best ambassadors for your brand in the media universe. And if the media loves you, it’s a short step to consumer love, too.
Market Positioning
You can sit there and look pretty, but who’s going to ask you to dance? Positioning yourself in an already crowded market is a delicate balance of insight, creativity and maneuverability. And if you don’t get it right, you’ll end up in the corner.
Brand Partnerships
Credibility by association is a powerful sales tool, but get it wrong and your market advantage evaporates. With a team that understands every implication and activation required, we can make sure that advantage is all that it seems.
Execution:
Launch delivery services
Launching a brand can take place just as effectively in your own backyard as it can from Cape Canaveral.
It all depends on your plans, your ambitions and your budgets. We offer the following brand launch services:
Brand Activation
You’ll want your market launch to be more “ta-daaa!” than “ahem?”, so presenting your brand to your core target audience should be forensically planned, whether it’s a must-go event, a can’t-miss social media push or a want-that gifting campaign. After all, nobody likes to apologise for being there.
Go-To-Market Strategy Implementation
You’ve written it, you’ve stress-tested it, you’ve budgeted for it. Now is not the time to let someone go off-road with your plans. You can trust the Rusty Rabbit’s team of disciplined marketing and operational professionals to take this launch over the finish line.
Online retail stores
Getting your e-commerce right is hard. Sorry, but it is. Consumers are impatient and choosy and are ready to spend their dollars wherever it’s easiest. A well-built online store offers the best user experience, slots seamlessly into your distribution plans and feeds you invaluable data to make the next sale even easier.
Sales Team
Yeah, yeah. Everyone will want to stock your product. Till they say “no”. That’s when salesmanship begins. If you haven’t got the relationship builders, the dealmakers, the closers, the job of launching your product becomes very steep. Talk to someone with those resources.
Point of Sale
You can’t relax once the customer is in store. The last mile is often the hardest in the sales process, and other brands can steal your limelight too easily. So make sure your store presence is enhanced, with effective visual merchandising, or risk disappearing into the “others” category.
Brand Ambassadors / Influencers
You can wave your own flag, but then why wouldn’t you? But when others wave your flag, your credibility gets an even bigger boost. We can find those flag-wavers for you, whether you want their physical or digital presence.
Media Purchasing
Bring your ball of string. The media landscape is a maze, and an expensive one, too. We can act as pathfinders through it, making sure that you buy what you need and that it pays with results.
After the Launch:
Asset management services
Sure, you can do that launch, take a step back and admire it, but give yourself about five minutes of that before pulling back into focus. Those plates won’t keep spinning on their own. We offer the following asset management services:
Annual Bookkeeping
Cashflow is king, but it’s pointless hiding under a rock at year-end. Your annual reckoning cannot be underestimated, for business viability, for profit and for tax. Ignore it at your peril. Or bring in someone who lives and breathes accounting and tax auditing, like the resident Rusty Rabbit specialist.
Quarterly performance review (goal matrix analysis)
If you don’t keep your eye on the road, you won’t see the corner ahead. Quarterly performance reviews mean you can check on your brand, your plan and metrics, as well as the market and your competitors and be ready to pivot in weeks, rather than months. That way, you can seize the opportunities and keep the numbers going the right way.
Taxes, license and trademark upkeep
The devil is in the detail and knows business can be badly compromised by poor housekeeping. Keeping tabs on so many markets can be bewildering. With ongoing relationships with many of the relevant authorities, Rusty Rabbit keeps the devil at bay with ease.
Boost your revenue:
E-commerce, merchandising & NPD
If there’s a sale to be made around every corner, don’t miss out on making it as easy as possible. We offer the following consulting services to supplement your brand income:
E-commerce
If online is edging towards being the biggest retail space, how embarrassed will you be if you can’t sell on your own website? Be ready for the consumer onslaught with a custom-built e-commerce function that ensures quick and easy transactions.
Promotional Merchandising
Thousands of media spaces are waiting to be filled with your message and none of them are online, on TV or on billboards. Create instant brand ambassadors with clothing, stationery, drinkware and the rest. But be relevant. No one drinks from a mug with a laxative logo on it.
Brand Supplemental Product Development
Innovate or you’re out of date. Make the term “brand new” mean something. Keep building on your brand, extending it, updating it, or you’ll lose to the new guy, the nimble innovator. Plan a well-structured NPD program into your strategy and stay ahead.
Trade show Collateral
Show you mean business, to business. If your stand is your statement of intent, make sure the take-aways keep giving the right message all the way back to the client’s desk. Design your entire trade show presence to reflect your brand and your proposal.
