Unlimited Design Subscription Service — A (failed) Experiment
In 2023 we silently launched a premium design subscription service as an experiment, a proof of concept.
After recent trends in the design agency and freelance world, where the “unlimited subscription” was popping up in almost every corner, we decided to evaluate the idea.
Assembli was born, and we tested a few website and business concepts. While we did have a few clients subscribed for 2–3 months, we quickly realized that this way of working and collaboration is far from what we want and love as a team.
If you are a freelance designer or small studio browsing Twitter in the last few months, you quickly get the feeling of missing out on the big and simple idea that will bring you big money in almost no time. Just make it a subscription service, sell your $5k/month package, and see your MRR increase.
Obviously, picking up the dominant rhetoric here, I think it’s clear for me to say that this is and will be, in most cases, far from reality. While I am sure you can make a lot of money with this approach, I doubt the overall sustainability and longevity.
How can you foster true partnerships and a sense of deeper involvement with your clients? How do you scale without burning out, outsourcing, or hiring more people?
We picked the name Assembli very much on purpose when we were diving into the concepts of the idea: “Assembly can denote the process of putting parts together to make a machine or other product.” — Leaning towards the metaphor of an assembly line in a factory.
Clients submit their requests on a board, which is the initial step in the assembly line. A worker promptly reviews the requests to ensure smooth progression to the next step. Typically, this involves immediately creating visuals in Figma to meet the promised 48-hour turnaround time. The process includes assembling, exporting, reviewing on the board, and moving on to the next item, following the same procedure.
We decided to sunset Assembli and the idea of a subscription-based service after roughly 4 months. This was an easy step and felt totally right after all, especially since we intentionally set out to test the idea and the business case. We were not emotionally attached and didn’t invest all our time or money.
While I don’t want to criticize this approach in general, it didn’t work for us. Through practical experience, we realized that it wasn’t suitable for our needs. I’m glad for those who can successfully implement this approach for themselves and their clients, as there is a strong demand for this type of work in various design fields, including websites and marketing assets.
Overall, we worked with three clients and talked to two potential companies. We did not experience a huge interest and found it hard to convert leads, which could be due to a dozen of reasons. However, I want to state that it didn’t work on autopilot, as some posts here might suggest sometimes.
This experiment further helped us to better understand and shape our own positioning as a boutique studio. What we offer now and how we work couldn’t be more different from what I described above. We are selective about who we work with. We want to talk to our clients, get to know them, understand their background, vision, and needs. We want to be your ally, your partner for as long as you need us. We truly believe in the benefits of partnerships and collaborations, focusing on quality over sole efficiency and quantity.
If you want to dive a bit deeper, I just published the initial version of our website, which we promoted via Twitter and LinkedIn for a couple of weeks.
In conclusion, I think it’s been worth trying for sure. It really helped me and the team to focus on our vision, our strengths and shape how we want to work and with whom.
smalltribe is a branding and digital design boutique studio that creates products, services, and experiences for good companies.
