CASE STUDY
Building Vendre from a two-person startup to a Nordic acquisition
Five years of design leadership, end-to-end project ownership and a full rebrand that took an unknown SME to a category-defining scale-up, acquired by Optimizers Group in January 2023.
I joined Vendre in 2010 when the company was called Startabutik and consisted of two people, a niche product, and an unclear path to becoming anything more. This was not a polished consulting role. It was the kind of early-stage environment where roles don't exist yet. You take what needs to be taken, and you grow into the part of the business that needs leadership most. For me, that part turned out to be design, delivery, sales and the commercial story we were telling the market.
Over the next five years I helped take the company from a small operator competing on price to a strategic E-commerce partner working with some of Sweden's most demanding retail brands. By the time I left, the trajectory was set.
Eight years later, Vendre was acquired by Optimizers, owned by Dutch private equity firm Main Capital Partners. The case below is about what that growth required, and the parts I owned.
The opportunity
When I joined, the business sat in an awkward position. The opportunity wasn't a redesign. It was a repositioning, and it had to happen in parallel to daily client delivery, which meant nothing could break.
The brand
Startabutik signalled "starter shop": cheap, entry-level, beginner-friendly. The work we did was strong, but the brand promised something different from what we delivered. We were billing 600 SEK an hour for work that, in the right framing, was worth twice that.
The service offering
Selling hours had a ceiling. Moving from hourly execution to structured strategic engagements meant clients would buy a result, not a rate card. The conversations would change accordingly.
The delivery operation
Ad-hoc delivery depended on whoever was available. Building cross-functional teams that shipped measurable outcomes was the only way to scale without quality varying project to project.
The client mix
The existing client base was heavy on low-margin SMEs. Moving toward enterprise names with more complex problems required a different kind of proof, and a different brand to stand behind.
The scope of engagement
Designing pages was one thing. Owning engagements from pitch through delivery to post-launch optimisation was the offer competitors rarely made and clients consistently valued most.
What I owned
The title was Design Manager. The work, looking back, was closer to a founding design lead with delivery, brand and commercial responsibilities on the side.
End-to-end delivery
Owned delivery across cross-functional teams: designers, developers and analysts working in coordinated pods on client engagements.
Pitch to launch
Pitched and project-managed engagements from the first sales conversation, through scoping and delivery, to a launched and trading webshop.
CRO methodology
Set the E-commerce optimisation and CRO methodology that became Vendre's commercial differentiator: data-led, testable, measurable.
The rebrand
Drove the full rebrand: strategic (positioning, narrative, naming, coining Vendre, French for "to sell") and cosmetic (logotype, visual identity, brand system).
E-commerce ecosystem
Worked daily across the full ecosystem: payment providers, logistics partners and platform vendors, not just the front-end of the shop.
Service repackaging
Helped repackage the offering from selling hours to selling outcomes, and shaped the commercial conversations that followed.
Named accounts
Served as designer, strategic consultant and account partner to Klarna, Webhallen, Fyndiq, Diskteknik and Badshop.
Team growth
Hired, coached and grew the design and delivery team as the company scaled from two people to a 27-person organisation.
The rebrand: Startabutik to Vendre
Strategic and cosmetic
I proposed and championed a full rebrand. Strategically: new positioning, new market narrative, new pricing posture, and a new name. I coined Vendre (French for "to sell"): short, ownable, internationally legible, and clear about what we did. Cosmetically: a new logotype, visual identity and brand system, applied consistently across marketing, sales material, deliverables and client touchpoints.
A forcing function
The rebrand worked as a forcing function: once we committed to a premium name and identity, pricing, deliverables and sales conversations all had to rise to match it. Startabutik would never win Klarna's business. Vendre could.
From hours to outcomes
The 600 SEK problem was a positioning problem
We were billing 600 SEK an hour for work that, in the right framing, was worth twice that. The answer wasn't a different rate card. It was a different kind of conversation. One where we were selling outcomes, not time.
Productising the service
I worked with leadership to repackage how we sold, moving from "we'll design your shop" to structured strategic engagements built around measurable conversion outcomes. Productised recurring services, scopes clients could evaluate, and KPIs they could show their board.
The conversations changed
Hourly rate doubled, from 600 to 1,200 SEK. But more importantly, clients started bringing us strategic problems, not execution requests.
E-commerce optimisation as our differentiator
A methodology, not a tool
I established the E-commerce optimisation and CRO methodology that became Vendre's signature service. Working from the LIFT model, PIE prioritisation, A/B testing infrastructure and quantitative analytics, we made every engagement defensible to the client and to the next prospect. It moved Vendre out of the crowded "web agency" category into a narrower, higher-margin one.
Across 100+ webshops
The depth went beyond conversion rates. Across 100+ webshops in B2C, B2B and marketplace segments, I worked daily across the full E-commerce stack: assortment and merchandising, checkout, payment providers, logistics and fulfilment, retention. That breadth is what let us advise clients strategically, not just optimise their landing pages.
Cross-functional delivery
As we scaled past a handful of clients, the bottleneck shifted from craft to coordination. I restructured delivery so that designers, developers and analysts worked as small cross-functional pods rather than in handover silos. Faster shipping, fewer handoffs, easier hiring.
Reflection
What staff-level design actually looks like
Vendre is the case where I learned what staff-level design actually looks like. Not from a framework, but from circumstance. When you join a company at two people, no one tells you where design stops and delivery, brand, sales or commercial work begins. You either step into the spaces that aren't being filled, or the company stays small. I stepped in.
Business problems, not design briefs
The rebrand, the pricing reset, the E-commerce methodology, the cross-functional pods, the end-to-end project ownership. None of those were design briefs. They were business problems where design leadership happened to be the lever that worked. That instinct, taking ownership of the business problem and not just the design problem, is the thread that's run through every senior role I've held since.
The foundation matters more than the feature
Vendre was eventually sold to a Dutch private equity-backed group. My contribution sits in the foundation that made that outcome possible. Not any single deliverable, but the model, the methodology and the positioning that held over the next decade. That's the part of the work I'm most proud of.
Outcomes
Doubled rate
Consultancy hourly rate grew from 600 to 1,200 SEK/h, driven by repositioning and moving from selling hours to selling outcomes.
120+ stores
Client base at exit, across B2C, B2B and marketplace segments including Klarna, Webhallen and Fyndiq.
27 FTE
Team size at acquisition, scaled from two people. The cross-functional delivery model I built became the standard way Vendre operated.
Acquired
January 2023. Vendre acquired by Optimizers (Main Capital Partners), part of a Nordic E-commerce group with combined revenues approaching €25M.
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