Wooden Roots

Wooden Roots is a small, niche company run by Marcus & Gemma Brown.  They moved from Los Angeles, California to Suffolk, UK in 2018 having started their business in 2009.  They build, sell and repair West African Drums alongside giving classes & workshops in their beautiful studio on the now dis-used US airfield, Bentwaters Parks just outside Woodbridge.  They also take their workshops out into their surrounding communities and work with entities such as HMP Hollesley Prison and Suffolk Family Carers.

Their Website Saga

In 2018, having just reached UK shores they identified the need to upgrade their HTML website and so approached what they thought to be a reputable company to help them with this.  They were told it would be £x amount to design the site and another £x amount to build the shopping cart.  It all seemed very straight forward and they were hopeful that their new website would be born in a couple of months.

And then the problems started...

The months passed by and no amount of pestering and cajoling would result in the appearance of their lovely new website.  Meeting after meeting on how to figure out such things as integrating shipping costs and suggestions that they offer free shipping as a work around?

NINE months later and they were told a “soft launch”  was imminent but could the domain name and email server be transferred so it would be easier to manage everything?  Once this happened, begrudgingly, Marcus and Gemma were asked if they could be shown how to enter products and work over Christmas to get all products onto the website so that the soft launch could happen in January 2019.  The launch did happen but was followed by many issues and when these issues were brought up they were told a cost would be incurred for every update/fix made or required.

Are you kidding me?

Marcus & Gemma are no longer with the company that built their current website.  In fact it all ended very badly and with them having to get help to transfer everything back to an independent server.  They received no refunds which by this time had run into £000’s.  They quickly had to learn the basics of Wordpress so that they could salvage what online business they had started and limped along with that until just a few months ago.

Light at the end of a long tunnel

A couple of months ago Marcus & Gemma caught wind of a new initiative from East Suffolk Council & the Business Growth Coaches Network.  The initiative was focussing on local businesses and giving those businesses digital advice.  Since enrolling on this project, Marcus & Gemma haven’t looked back.  Within weeks they have transferred their domain to Squarespace, they have created a simple website for Wooden Roots which includes eCommerce.   They are a lot happier with the results they are producing themselves over a couple of months versus the struggle over 12 months with a so called dedicated and knowledgeable company.  They plan to relaunch their new website with help from East Suffolk Council and BCGN Jan 2021

The moral of the story

Wooden Roots is a typical example of what has happened to many small businesses in the digital era.  Gemma and Marcus, although they lost a lot of money are now well on their way to being back in control of their website, it’s content and with no more hidden costs to worry about.