Little did Emily know when she met the Lalau family at her son’s preschool, that in a few years she would become an integral part of their business. Groomers Pro has been a long-term client since 2017. For those who aren’t professional groomers or dog enthusiasts Groomers Pro is a leading distributor of high-end pet grooming supplies and products.

Her first project was the Groomers Pro Catalog (remember catalogs are Emily’s first love) and we’re now four catalogs in and still counting. Emily has not lost her love for this type of project.

Emily also started a successful email marketing strategy taking advantage of abandoned carts, using waitlists for fast-moving products, and implementing customer focussed dispatch emails (primarily to reduce call volume, but also increase sales). Add to this promotional campaigns such as the COVID-19 Groomer’s Stimulus, Professional Groomers Week (at the same time as Amazon Prime), and a virtual trade show (when it should have happened in person) and the business is exponentially growing.

Emily has also produced promotional leaflets to support the sales at Dog Shows, Trade Shows and for use on the Groomer’s Pro van (think Snap-on). Emily manages the Big Commerce store GroomersPro.com, implements the promotions, and is working her way optimizing the many many products (over 1,000 SKUs). She has just finished building the Amazon Store for their own branded products and manages the YouTube and Facebook accounts. What’s next? It’s onwards and upwards, we’ve only just scratched the surface...

While Groomers Pro is managed by one brother (Marco), Eye Envy is managed by the other (Marcelo). Eye Envy is a line of natural and non-irritating pet care products for the removal of tear stains. (Yes, some dogs and cats get tear stains, who knew?) Emily likes to think of Eye Envy as her baby, though in reality, it was more like a teenager she took under her wing. In 2017 it was still an adolescent waiting to bloom into the beautiful brand it has become today.

First off was the revamp of the website - moving away from ‘mom and pop’ and poor quality pictures - then a rebrand, with a fresh clean look. This included a refined logo, new fonts, followed by redesigned labels for all products, and also the packaging of three products for the international market. Photography is an integral part of the brand, (who doesn’t love beautiful imagery of dogs and cats) and Emily created the strapline “Tough on Tear Stains, Kind to Pets”.

Eye Envy is now living the marketing dream - “targetting”, by product, pet, and consumer behavior and this is just the beginning. Eye Envy has taken its popularity in the now declining “Show Ring” and transferred it to today’s arena - Instagram, where everyone and their dog is on show. Eye Envy’s competitive advantage is in the cat world, so Emily has directed focus there. She also created the 3-Step Kit for both dogs and cats, an easy-to-understand and how-to product that reduces consumer confusion but increases the number of items sold. Emily also created an instruction booklet, is working with an agency to increase its Amazon presence, and has implemented a successful email marketing strategy - for both flow emails (that are triggered on consumer behavior) and campaigns, including V.I.P. (Very Important Pet) Week.

Gosh, this baby is growing up, but it’s not getting old yet!

An offshoot of Groomers Pro is their workwear brand, Angels Grooming Apparel - forget smocks or scrubs, this is functional and fashionable, high-quality, fur-free fabric perfect for the dog grooming salon. The clothing is made here in the heart of Los Angeles.

Emily worked on the rebrand for the company, it’s now, crisp, modern, and reflects the clothes it sells. Hand-in-hand with the rebrand came a web refresh. This included Search Engine Optimization of the online store, applying a new theme more suited for selling clothing, and incorporated the new look and feel of the brand. Emily manages the online promotions (including an aggressive Black Friday - Cyber Monday promo), updates the homepage, and creates and schedules Angels’ email campaigns.

With all these pet companies Emily is working for, you would expect her to have a pet. She doesn’t. Allergies suck.

Mama Mio skincare is the beloved ‘go-to’ pregnancy range for so many women, from royals to celebrities to everyone (including Emily). The Mama Mio mantra is ‘Fit skin for life’.

Emily joined Mama Mio in 2006 - The Early Years - as their Online Marketing Manager (a.k.a. ‘Webmama’) to grow the online sales channel. Emily developed their website many times, really learnt about Search Engine Optimization and wasn’t too put off by pregnancy to start her own family.

Emily also worked on:

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (Yahoo/Google) testing and refining a variety of different campaigns, keywords and offers.

Email Marketing Calendar – promotional emails (as shown right) to prospects and customers.

Affiliate Marketing Program on a CPA basis. This allowed a cost effective way to explore advertising where costs had proved prohibitive.

Building long term relationships with non-competitive retailers to take advantage of mutual opportunities and shared knowledge.

Emily also set up an Amazon store and managed the fulfillment of all online orders.

Emily's skin was as smooth as a baby's bottom from 2006 to 2008.

Whittard of Chelsea - “Purveyors of Fine Tea & Coffee, established 1886” – that is as British as you can get.

Emily was Whittard’s Mail Order Business Development Manager for 2 ½ years. In short this means if you ordered First Flush Darjeeling between 2003 and 2005, you can bet the whole process – start to finish was managed by her.

Emily was employed to grow the Mail Order Business after an initial rescaling back after the first mail order operation had failed. This required immediate changes to the website to meet industry standards, followed by in-house operational changes to the call center/customer service function and fulfillment team, before growing the business with the development of the new website www.whittard.com in 2005.

Amongst dealing with pest callers (yes, this really happened!) Emily’s responsibilities included:

Management, motivation, recruitment and training of the call center/customer service and mail order warehouse.

Implementing best practice procedures to support stores and mail order, including standardizing communications and reporting.

Management of the Mail Order warehouse relocation and refit.

Successful online and offline marketing trials, leading to a promotional program for the department. This included catalog mailings, promotional emails, up-selling/cross selling. 

Project management from start to finish of the Whittard website, with the objective of providing a ‘Whittard’ shopping experience and improved functionality for the user.

Emily also learned how to make a “proper cuppa” – teapots only!

ITW Envopak - Emily’s first job and where she learned to become a ‘Jack of All Trades’ Marketing. Here she climbed the ladder from Marketing Assistant to Product Manager, New Product Development Manager, Catalog Manager and Catalog/E-Business Marketing Manager.

She worked on many, many catalogs (some are shown right), project managed her first website and launched a variety of new products. She also did a lot of reporting!

Catalogs are Emily’s first love – she sourced the creative agency, decided on content/product inclusion, pricing and coordinated the photography and copy writing. Emily also organized 6 catalog mailings a year with a mailing house and was responsible for the growth, management and maintenance of in-house database of over 26,000 contacts.

Emily contributed to the strategic direction of the New Product Development process. Conducting both desk and field market research for the development of specific new products. She wrote launch plans and devised specific project campaigns/briefs to provide focus and direction for the UK Sales Force. She worked with design agencies to produce literature/advertisements for new products. Emily also organized projects with Salford University, to ensure that undergraduates had a commercial understanding of product design

Emily also organized plenty of trade shows, including the design of the exhibition stands, provision of support materials and the demonstration of products.

She designed, wrote and edited the company newsletters, press releases and literature for targeted direct mail campaigns and emailshots for specific customer groups.  

In short, she is a ‘Jack of All Trades’ Marketing.

Bliss is renowned for award-winning spa services, beauty and skincare products. Their strapline is “Achieve a Higher State of Happy”. It says it all.

Emily’s remit for this client included an audit of on and offline activity for compliance to UK legislation, review of operational procedures, competitor analysis and assessment of supplier options. Emily also worked with New York office to co-ordinate the UK online and offline marketing calendar, which included content changes to the website, monthly catalogs and beaut-emails (as shown right.)

Emily can highly recommend their Laboratoire Remède Alchemy Moisturizer. The best perk of the job!

“A Jolly Pooch is a Jelly Pet” what a fun client to work with. Bright colors, a playful design and plenty of images of cute dogs. What more can you ask for?

Emily helped create the brand image with the owners and a designer, provided briefs, content and copy for the hang tag and brochure, and created JellyPet.com. A brand focused website to drive traffic to the Jelly Pet products on Amazon and their distributor’s website. Emily wrote the content, sourced images, built the website and made it search engine friendly. She installed Google Analytics and submitted the website to Google Console so the site can be indexed in google.

The next project is creating the Jelly Pet Amazon store (yay! more cute pics of doggies and puns such as pawrent!)

Parasitics Analytics - an innovative tech start-up (SpaceX alumni) - needed help with getting themselves on the map (forgive the pun). The concept is set to revolutionize the retail display industry; a clever piece of technology that tells brands if their P.O.P. Displays are installed in-store and working (hence the location pun).

Emily created a contemporary scrolling website to match the look and feel of the Parasitics Analytics brand. The website featured iconography to explain the complex nature of the technology and an extensive FAQ section, so the product could be easily comprehended.

Emily also created two complementary brochures tailored to suit the two different markets the company was targeting. Emily wrote the content and worked closely with a creative designer to produce the final products, which tied in perfectly with the website.

AGA Displays & Fixtures is an innovative POP (Point Of Purchase) company that works hard to put the big brands out there. They are proud to boast that Dunkin Donuts, Fiji Water and Pepperidge Farms are amongst their clients.

Emily has worked on various marketing projects including the creative direction of the company. She created the tongue and cheek voice of the brand, which is carried throughout the website and editorials she has written for them. She managed the strategic development of the website, which she project managed with a new media agency. The brief was to bring a creative edge to the brand in order to stack up against the competition.

She has also worked on press releases, adverts and trade show collateral for AGA.   

Emily did not get to eat any Dunkin Donuts while working for this client. This is her only complaint.

Emily was honored when Jason from Hop To It Construction asked her to build his website. He’s worked on her home, is a family friend but above all, he is the nicest guy you will ever meet.

Emily built a fully responsive website with an Instagram feed so his latest projects automatically appear on his homepage without any additional work. His site features local photography so people know he is from the South Bay (don’t let that Aussie accent fool you.) His website is Search Engine Optimized so he can be found on google.

Jason comes highly recommended, but join the queue – Emily has numerous home renovation projects (her love of ‘Grand Designs’ has been mentioned before.)

It’s not every day you fulfill your lifelong dream of ‘Grand Designs’ – well sort of. Working on Tim Zigrang’s website Emily felt like she was heading in the right direction. Amazing contemporary properties with ocean views, mid-century modern remodeled ranches and open-plan loft style living, all here in the South Bay.

Emily was given free reign by Tim, with the brief to bring the Zigrang Construction website in line with Tim’s own work - clean, modern, sleek, striking.  The white background serves as a clean canvas to showcase the stunning properties. The grey typeface is in keeping with current interior design trends.

Emily added important press pieces to the website, since Tim’s work has featured in Coastal Living and Southbay Home along with other notable publications and books. Emily made sure the website is search engine friendly - it’s amazing how many other developers, today still not do this behind the scenes work - and added google analytics for tracking/reporting website visitors and measuring the success of future marketing campaigns.

Since Tim was a busy, busy man - on-site at various locations - Emily met him regularly to discuss the website and minimize email threads. Face-to-face communication, was quicker, easier and answered questions. Plus - the bonus – advice on Emily’s own remodel.

“Is a smoother, younger complexion only a sip away?” That is one of the many questions that Emily posed while working with Doctor Absolute – already big in Asia, the collagen brand wanted to break into the U.S. market. She dove head first into the world of ingestible collagen and came up immersed in Pinterest and learning from the best beauty bloggers. Her new mantra is blog, pin, post.

The task was all encompassing from assessing the packaging to meet F.D.A. guidelines, setting the R.R.P., researching shipping materials/methods, to creating and executing the online marketing program.

Emily specified, created and developed a fully responsive website (Shopify), a Pinterest Page, Facebook Advertising and ran Google Adword campaigns. She became a seasoned blogger - she is very proud of her 5 day article “Anti-Aging Tips for the Over 30s”.  She also managed the email marketing campaigns/promotions (Mail Chimp) and asked customers at one point if they were “Straight Outta Collagen?”  

Emily also harnessed her cooking skills and experimented with collagen in the kitchen; baking anti-aging granola bars, rejuvenating oatmeal and good-for-your skin smoothies. To be honest, success was hit or miss.  

Lisa is not your typical gardener, in fact she isn’t a “gardener” at all. She is one of those brave people who gave up their career to follow their dream/passion. Of course Lisa is a savvy business woman and knew her website had to do more than “cut the mustard.”

Emily and Lisa sat down at length, discussed and brainstormed how to really make her business stand out from the rest - for it is indeed unique. Lisa went away, did her homework and came back with a gallery of pics (yes, there is more than the mandatory five) and a clear direction for her website.

Emily chose a minimalist design that was clean, fresh and modern to showcase the beauty of her work – storefronts abundant with baskets of gold, rose garden arbors and water-wise gardens with rock rivers.  

Emily made sure that lisasgardentherapy.com is search engine friendly, so Lisa won’t miss out on opportunities with local businesses and nearby residents who want someone more than a lawn mower/leaf blower.

This was a collaboration and the result shows - a wonderful website that was launched in less than two weeks.

Fast forward two years, to the present day and forgive the pun, her business is blooming. She is now tending the majority of the Riviera Village storefronts and giving realtors the edge with her curb therapy. To match her changing (and growing) business needs, Emily redesigned the website. It still has a minimalist look but with a vertical design and equal concentration on all areas of her business, including increased information on services and yes, even more stunning photos.

Emily is now successfully growing hydrangeas in the South Bay – even if they are in a pot. She still blames her soil.

Riviera United Methodist Preschool (R.U.M.P.) is a developmental preschool based in Redondo Beach. It operates a parent-participation program, where the school recognizes parents as teachers and sees their involvement in preschool education as a natural stage of development.

In recent years the school was struggling to meet their full capacity and were also attracting parents who did not understand the parent co-op program.

The new website was designed with these issues in mind. It included information on the parent-participation program: the daily schedule, the teachers; the facilities; the tuition fees and admission; the on-site sibling nursery (a unique selling point for the school) and the additional Pre-K program. The school’s philosophy of ‘learn through play’ was strongly represented, with images showing R.U.M.P. students having fun in a clean and safe environment. The R.U.M.P. ABC homepage demonstrated that a solid curriculum underlined the ‘learn through play' philosophy. The testimonials page ensured that its well-known reputation was upheld.

Emily identified information gaps, organized the structure, co-wrote the pages and built the website. She also took many of the photos. This is where she learned that taking pictures of children is one of the hardest things (ever).