Studio Wren · Design studio · Positioning sprint, 2025

Repositioned a design agency as a product partner

Studio Wren was a well-liked design studio in Dubai Design District competing on price for brand projects. Six weeks later it had one sentence, and a different kind of client.

average project size: 3×
pitches won, up from 1 in 8: 1 in 3
people in a year: 14 → 19

The problem

Studio Wren did beautiful work, and so did the forty other studios it pitched against. Most projects were brand identities at around AED 90,000, won on price and chemistry, and the team was tired of explaining why they cost more than a freelancer.

Hannah Reid, the founder, had noticed that the studio’s best and most profitable projects were something else entirely: designing the first version of digital products for health and finance startups. Nobody outside the studio knew they did it.

What we did

Eleven client interviews

Past clients explained, in their own words, why they had hired Wren and what changed afterwards.
The real alternatives

The competition for product work wasn’t other studios but in-house hires and big digital agencies.
One sentence

“We design the first version of products that people have to trust.”
What to stop

No more identity-only projects, and a new proposal format built around product milestones.

The result

Within a year the average project grew from AED 90,000 to AED 280,000. Wren now wins one pitch in three instead of one in eight, mostly because it pitches far less: clients arrive having read the website and already know what the studio is for.

The team has grown from 14 to 19 people, including its first product strategist, and every new hire can explain what the studio does in one breath.