This was a big job for a small agency - and it delivered big time. Awarded the largest budget the company ever had by a couple orders of magnitude, the challenge presented us by their new, highly-leveraged owners to put this firm on a solid footing. First, the results. For the client, a flood of orders so huge it crashed their order and management program, requiring new hardware and software. (They did not complain.) For Bartley Associates, the Portland ME agency, numerous design and production awards; the one we prized most was 'only' a second, from the prestigious Advertising Club of Boston's Hatch Awards competition. Not expecting the work of our 
sapling firm to be noticed against the big timber from Boston and New York, no one was planning to attend until we got a phone call telling us 'it might be worth the trip.' The Pionite laminate line was chum in the retail laminate waters versus the likes of Wilsonart, Nevamar, and Formica; looking for an edge, we interviewed every single employee in the Lewiston Maine office and factory, where we learned from someone in steel-toe work boots and a hard hat that top US interior designers were getting their custom designs manufactured in Pionite, which could efficiently produce small batches. Instead of wasting money trying to get another percent out of retail, we desgned this package expressly to reach interior designers who could fill an entire building with a single purchase order, which proved to be a very successful strategy. (Note: there was no internet then, and no high res digital photography - this was just before the dawn of the internet age, when design and production were delightlfully difficult. And Pioneer, the makers of Pionite, still uses this approach.)
