Case Study · A Studio Rebrand

The Studio That Rebranded Itself

The most recent brand refresh we shipped was our own. This is how eStudio Toussaint went from a generic creative studio pitched at everyone to a boutique brand studio pitched at small businesses, boutique brands, and short-stay hosts — with a clear service ladder and an actual acquisition product — in one July.

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The Brief

eStudio Toussaint had been running for eight months as a broad creative studio — brand identity, social media, creative direction, and creator strategy, all pitched to “emerging and established brands.” The positioning was true, and it wasn’t wrong. But it was doing three things at once that made it hard for prospects to say yes.

First, the copy sounded like every other agency — “grow with clarity, confidence, and purpose,” “brands that mean something.” Second, the site had no entry-level product, so every enquiry started at retainer scale ($1,200 / month) — too high for the small businesses most likely to hire us. Third, the creator/influencer service was pulling attention away from the higher-margin brand work that the studio was actually best at.

The rebrief was simple: reposition eStudio Toussaint around the customer who could actually pay, price for how they buy, and remove everything that distracted from that.

The Approach

Positioning strategy

We rebuilt the studio’s positioning around three customer types with real budgets and clear pain: small businesses two-to-seven years in whose brand has fallen behind how they show up in person; boutique brands ready for a refresh; and boutique short-stay hosts scaling into their second or third property. Creator work was preserved but demoted to an “also occasionally” position, so it stayed available without confusing the primary offer.

A four-tier service ladder

The old services page listed five pillars in flat order, all priced at retainer scale. We restructured around a clear ladder — Brand Look-Over ($650, five days), Brand Refresh (from $2,800, four to six weeks), Full Brand Identity (from $7,500, eight to twelve weeks), and Short-Stay Property Brand (from $4,500, six to eight weeks). Retainers stayed available but moved beneath the ladder as ongoing work, not the entry point.

An acquisition product

The Brand Look-Over is the most important thing the rebrand delivered. A $650, five-day audit is genuinely useful whether the client engages us afterwards or not — which means it lowers commitment, converts curiosity into engagement, and gives us a fair sample of the client’s brand before we quote anything larger. Every previous enquiry now has a natural first step.

A sub-brand for a specific vertical

Short-stay hosts got their own sub-brand — Maison Toussaint — with its own coastal palette, its own Etsy shop, and its own product line (welcome book templates, brand kits, response templates, cleaner briefs, from AU$15 to AU$59). Hosts who need a template buy Maison. Hosts who need custom hire the studio. Two prices, one aesthetic family, no confusion.

A new product line, too

Alongside the client-work rebrand, we launched The Personal Systems Edit — a suite of editorial digital planners for GoodNotes and Notability, starting with The Daily Edit on 13 July 2026. This gave the studio a low-price point-of-entry (AU$19) for readers who like our taste but don’t need custom work, and started building an owned audience through the accompanying Library newsletter.

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Deliverables

• Repositioning strategy and voice guide
• Complete site rewrite across six pages (home, about, services, work with us, library, Maison)
• New four-tier service ladder with pricing and turnaround
• Brand Look-Over as a productised entry-level engagement
• Maison Toussaint — full sub-brand identity for short-stay hosts, including coastal-neutrals palette, primary wordmark, MT mark, brand hero card, and product roadmap
• The Personal Systems Edit — the flagship digital planner suite, starting with The Daily Edit (Etsy listing, mockups, receipt experience, launch marketing)
• Flodesk welcome sequence and Library newsletter infrastructure
• Instagram launch week (6 posts + 8 stories in Canva)
• Pinterest strategy and first 12 launch pins

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The Outcome

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What we learned

Positioning is a strategic decision, not a copywriting one. The old site had beautiful words, but no clear answer to “who is this for” and “where do I start.” The rebrand didn’t add much design — it subtracted decisions. Fewer service tiers. Fewer customer types. Fewer sentences per page. What’s left carries more.

The other lesson: an acquisition product changes everything. Once every enquiry has a natural first step (the Brand Look-Over), the pressure of “is this the right retainer for me?” moves off the enquiry form and onto a paid engagement where both sides know what they’re evaluating. That single change is worth more than any homepage headline we’ve ever written.

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If your brand needs the same kind of tightening — positioning, pricing, and the removal of everything that distracts from your best work — start with a Brand Look-Over.