We recently had the opportunity to interview Louis Key, Founder of Softriver, a logo design agency. Starting his logo design journey at the early age of 13, Louis has now spent a decade in this field, garnering extensive expertise in design. With a passion for making affordable top-notch logo designs and empowering businesses, Louis Key built his agency, Softriver, where they create logos for start-ups, small, and large businesses globally.
In this insightful interview, the founder speaks about his experience so far in this sector, and visions for leading a business at such a young age, and also shares important advice for aspiring designers to come.
The Advent Of Louis Key’s Professional Path
We started the interview by asking, “Could you start by telling us about your professional career path?”
Louis shared, “I have been a logo designer for over 10 years, starting at 13 years old. After designing over 5000 logos on my own, I created Softriver, a leading logo design agency, where we create logos for startups, large businesses, and small businesses, in over 150 countries, and now we have about 17000 customers.
Currently, at the age of 23, I oversee a team of 30, serving 1000+ monthly customers. Renowned for exceptional customer service, we aim to make top-notch design accessible to all, empowering even those with limited resources to establish a billion-dollar brand.”
Overcoming Major Adversities In Business
Every business has its set of hurdles. To learn how Louis Key overcame such challenging phases, we asked, “What have been the most significant barriers you’ve overcome, and how have these challenges influenced your leadership philosophy?”
He shared, “As we have customers from over 150 countries, it was not only challenging to adapt our service, and CX to each culture, and way of life, but also our design style. We are continuously seeking to learn more about every neighborhood, every town, and every industry in the world. To be able to understand our customer’s vision perfectly, and deliver great service at a global scale.
My customer-centric philosophy prioritizes satisfying customers and providing excellent service, regardless of the challenges involved in handling a large number of clients. We go above and beyond to ensure customer happiness, even if it means going to their homes and dedicating a week to perfecting their logo.
Despite charging an average of $200 for a logo, we value the importance of great design and understanding our customers’ diverse needs across various industries, countries, and cultures.”
Fostering Innovative Approach
We further asked, “How do you foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within your organization?”
Louis added, “Passion for design, great service, and emotional connection with customers is crucial. I meticulously screen, interview, and select the best global talent from over 1000 candidates. I prioritize instilling love and passion in my employees, fostering a positive daily experience. I cultivate a culture of hard work and high earnings, motivating individuals to surpass typical company expectations.
I’d say the key here is to encourage everyone to grow and make them understand that through hard work. they can become very successful, and valuable. Lastly, the ‘setup’ for each employee is crucial. We have different contracts, payments, and rewards structures for each employee, to maximize their optimism, and reward them perfectly according to their personality, and their needs.”
Staying Ahead Of The Curve
We were intrigued to understand more about the approaches adopted by Louis Key in ensuring that his company has a unique position in the market. So, we asked, “In the context of global competition, how has your company adapted its strategies to maintain a competitive edge?”
He replied, “Competition in design, especially logo design, is crucial. One way to maintain our edge is through great design. Most of the competition are not ‘tastemakers’ and don’t understand the principles behind billion-dollar company brands. And the few percentage of designers who do, immediately raise their prices, and go towards the high-end, high-budget market, competing again against bigger players.
So maintaining our low prices, while increasing our design edge, is key to our competitive advantage. And what we believe will allow us to become the largest handmade logo design company in the world.”
Louis added, “Another challenge is of course AI and its potential evolution. We believe AI will reshape the design industry, and completely change customer expectations, and the ‘value’ that customers are looking for. AI is elevating the design floor level, so to maintain our edge, we need to add more emotion, more passion, and more storytelling into each logo, to foster our value proposition.
In the long run, AI might even do this, which is why I believe the future of design is in the management, tailoring, and strategy behind every company’s visual digital presence. Meaning handling not just the logo, but every brand asset, every digital element, and organizing this for customers, while having very low costs by leveraging AI, to do more, with less.”
Incorporating Customer Insights
Customer feedback plays a crucial role in shaping a company’s position. So, we asked, “What role has customer feedback played in shaping the direction of your products or services?”
Be responded, “Customer feedback is key, we listen carefully to every negative experience, usually it has always been a culture disconnect, so every negative experience has helped us tremendously in understanding our global and diverse customer base.”
Ethical Practices And Responsibilities
To gather Louis Key’s insights on including ethical business practices, we asked, “How do you approach corporate responsibility and ethical business practices in your operations?”
“Many designers steal work or use pre-made icons to make more designs while reducing costs. But this is highly irresponsible and tarnishes our industry. As a company, the biggest corporate responsibility is the well-being and mental health of my employees. We go above and beyond to make sure everyone feels great at all times and loves their job.” Louis reflects.
Words Of Wisdom For Beginners
Lastly, we ended the interview by asking, “Would you like to give beginners in the same industry some advice?”
“The goal is to think big; don’t settle for less. Thinking big will give you a different approach, positioning, and value proposition to 99% of our industry.” Louis concluded.
Follow Louis Key on LinkedIn.
Find Softriver on LinkedIn and visit their website www.softriver.io
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