CASE STUDIES

• AG Design
• Altcom Ltd
• Artonomy
• Black Cat Public Relations
• Business Cornwall
• Channel Computing
• Corporate Toolkit Ltd
• D'Silva Editions
• Dodo Pad
• Go24
• Headworx
• InfoTeam
• IntoArt Solutions LLP
• i-webmarketing
• Leap Media
• Lowdon Graphic Design
• New Business Matters
• Noel Akers
• Rebus Collective
• Richard Quick Design
• Seed Brand Communications
• sixixis

REPORTS

ICT and Media

Overview
Rebecca Jay was working as joint CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi in
Prague in the mid 1990s when the world's largest advertising
agency announced that it was to split in two. Almost simultaneously Rebecca found out that she was pregnant. "I saw it as an opportunity to change direction," she says. Rebecca began
to make the transition from glamorous executive to North
London mum, but when her son was just three weeks old,
Rebecca got a phone call that set her life on an unexpected
new course.
"It was an old friend, and she told me about a diary brand
that was about to become extinct, called - aptly enough - the
Dodo Pad. I'd been given one myself as a teenager and had
fond memories of it. So, out of curiosity as much as anything,
I agreed to give the company some marketing advice. I ended
up buying the brand myself!"
By that stage, Dodo Pad was a trademark on its last legs.
"My attitude was that this could be a useful way of keeping
my brain-cells going while looking after a young baby,"
Rebecca remembers. "I couldn't have imagined in my wildest
dreams that I'd end up running a company that's turning over
£300,000 a year!"
Dodo Pad now sells not just the original diaries but a whole
range of quirkily branded merchandise, from personal
organisers to greetings cards and mugs. Its products are on
sale in bookshops and stationery suppliers throughout the
UK, and the company is currently planning a major push into
the US. All this from a quiet corner of west Cornwall.
"Trevor, my husband, had spent a lot of time here when he
was younger and always hoped to move back," Rebecca
explains. Then we arranged to rent a cottage in Mithian for
a holiday, but got a letter from the agents to say that the
owners were selling it, so we couldn't go. Trevor said 'I wonder
how much they want for it,' and - to cut a long story short
- we ended up living here."

Workforce
Apart from Rebecca, Dodo Pad has four part-time staff. "I've
always run the company on the basis of flexible working,"
she explains. "Not least because I need to be able to work
that way myself. It's great to be able to take the afternoon
off and go and see my son playing rugby, but by the same
token that might mean that I need to take my laptop home
and deal with emails in the evening. Our finance manager
comes in one day a week and invoices us for accountancy and
book-keeping. The person who runs our mail order side had
a top job in London, but like me, she's someone who wanted
the flexibility that makes life that much more enjoyable."
Dodo Pad outsources a lot of design, IT and mailing work to
local suppliers. "The quality of the work you can get done
in Cornwall is every bit as good as anything you'd find in
London," she enthuses.

Technology
For three years Dodo Pad kept an office and a sales manager
in London, but in spring 2006 Rebecca realised that with
internet technology the whole business could just as easily be
based in Cornwall. It's now housed in a converted stable block
just three minutes drive from her home (or 15 minutes bike
ride down the quiet country lanes). "We've got superb views
over the countryside one way and down to the sea the other
- the nicest workspace you could imagine," she says.
Broadband has made the move that much easier, says
Rebecca. "We use Skype (a VoIP service), which means
colleagues and I can talk to each other and our business
partners - printers in China, designers in Ireland - whether
we're in the office, at home or travelling away. You can even
add a webcam that turns your laptop into a videophone."