Unfold 2018 — Year in Review

We know, last year is so, well, last year. But 2018 was really good for us so we’re giving it one last visit before embracing the new.

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Unfold Stories

8 min readJan 7, 2019

Last year marked a distinct shift for us. A lot of the groundwork we laid back in 2017 came to fruition through new hires, new offices, and new clients — resulting in our best economic year, ever. We strengthened our team with more core design and strategy expertise and ventured into uncharted territory with a brand new focus on content. This enables us to deliver better in every aspect of a project: from strategy and ideation to shipping products with razor-sharp microcopy.

Growing to a project team of 25 was a bit daunting but has worked a treat. Our expertise in design, technology, strategy, and content let us delve deeper into problems than ever before and deliver smart, brand-building products that help clients position themselves for the future.

We’re increasingly working with companies –both big and small– that have to adapt to stay relevant in heavily changing markets. We help them succeed with solid market understanding, strategic thinking and the technological tools needed to get ahead. Here’s a brief look at the work we did last year.

If you’re here for the fun parts, skip halfway down the page 🍾.

OBOS

The leading cooperative building association in the Nordics is embracing technological change with open arms. Last year we launched a brand new platform to make it easier than ever for thousands of board members across the country to manage close to half a million homeowners’ properties. The launch was such a big success that we had to speed up the onboarding process to get as many board members on board (pun intended) ASAP. Our initial target of 100 cooperatives active on the platform by the end of the year got smashed, with more than 700 cooperatives now actively using Styrerommet.no to manage their properties. At this rate, we’ll be finished half a year ahead of schedule.

We’re doing big things together with OBOS this year, and although we can’t talk about it just yet it’s safe to say that life will be easier in 2018 should you happen to live in an OBOS-managed home.

Head over to our in-depth case study on Styrerommet.no if you want to know more.

Krogsveen

We were very excited to start working with real estate broker Krogsveen late last year. The market for real estate brokers in Norway is extremely competitive, with an oversaturated market and new DYI-platforms looking to shake up the industry. We’re helping them grab market shares through new, powerful technological tools that’ll be launching this spring.

Orkla

You’ve got to work to stay on top when you’re one of the biggest fish in the sea. Orkla is a leading supplier of branded consumer goods in the grocery sector, and they are constantly looking to innovate their existing offers. It’s not every day they look to capture brand new markets though, so we were especially happy that they chose to do so together with us. Using our methodology for strategy and idea creation together with Orkla we were able to analyze the new segment in question and find brand new ways to please people’s stomachs. It’s all still very hush-hush so we can’t go into any details but we’re looking forward to this and more work like it this year.

Future Home (Get)

Technology is becoming an increasingly bigger part of our lives, and we were happy to help the Future Homes team with a new visual language and UI for their smart home application. With a user-friendly app and smart hub you can connect a growing list of smart devices within lighting, heating, alarms, and electronic locks — to give you total control, comfort, and security.

Future Home’s app lets you automate your home based on your personal preferences and needs. You can easily control your connected devices, create timers and shortcuts, adjust modes and set up alerts for important notifications.

SNØ

You might think it’s weird to build a 50.000 sqm indoor ski hall in a snow-drenched country were people are born with skis on their feet. Or you might not. We don’t really care either way. What we do care about is building great products and user experiences, both of which we did for SNØ. We worked with SNØ to craft a strategically solid vision and plan the complete user experience from online purchase, through a ski-filled day of fun to a future revisit. The culmination of our work was the launch of their web page, where our goal was to pre-sell ski passes a whopping 3 years ahead of the opening (SNØ opens in 2020). A daunting task for sure, which had us watching the sales numbers with angst and excitement as we hit the launch button. Luckily our fears were unfounded as all entry tickets sold out within 8 minutes 🎉. That’s how crazy we’re about skiing up here.

Anton Sport

Having worked together with Anton Sport for the past six years we’re now at the stage of a happy, healthy marriage. We hope they feel the same. We’ve previously helped Anton Sport build a bespoke storefront and back end solution, start a loyalty program, install interactive screens in their stores, and build online brand stories. In 2018 we’ve done some technological innovation around the latter, which will hit stores early this year.

Having fun

Working with great people lets you hang out with great people. We did a lot of really great hanging out last year.

We spent a week in Rio de Janeiro surfing, dancing, swimming, sightseeing, and sipping caipirinhas. By far the best hanging out we did.
We went boating in Tvedestrand, an idyllic town in the south of Norway.
Visiting Anniken’s parents to play the real deal shuffleboard is becoming an annual event. You better bring your A game if you want to win here.
We went to Hafjell for some good old boardin’ & boozin’.
Martin, our longtime financial advisor, guided each of us through private financial due diligence, again helping us choose the best financial deals for ourselves and our families.
Our summer party got off to a haphazardous start with Janne’s misjudgment of skateboards+physics but soon enough we were partying the night away.
Almost half the office is now joining our twice-weekly workouts with personal trainer Ole. At this rate, we’ll have to open a gym in 2020.
We ended the year singing our hearts out at the new office with some golden DJs.

And! We got new offices. There are at least 1 food court, 2 concert halls, 3 nightclubs, 4 drool-inducing good places to eat, 5 great places to drink and 1 emergency room within 5 minute’s walk from our brand new offices in downtown Oslo. That is if you ever want to leave the office at all. It’s pretty fabulously amazingly great, in our humble opinion. You should definitely drop by.

This would be a good time to mention that we’re looking for new people, so here’s a link to a few job descriptions. We hope we get to hang out next year, even though we don’t know you yet.

We had some great people join us in 2018 who all made us better in their own ways.

Janne, Hampus, and Daniel strengthened us with key tech, design, and producer skills.
Jeanett joined as our Head of Operations and has made us a well-oiled machine.
Andreas moved back home from London to join us and lead our new focus on content.

Max and Aleksander also joined at the very end of the year and we’re very happy to have them start the new year with us.

We also had a great guy move on. Simen, one of our founders, decided to leave the field and seek out new pastures. We’re grateful to have had him and selfishly glad no competitor got him. Godspeed, brother.

Onto the next

2018 was a year of rapid growth, change and expansion. Going into 2019 we’re better positioned than ever to deliver on complex projects and ship advanced technological products. We would love to tell you about what we have in store for this year but that’ll have to wait till a later post.

In the meantime, we’d like to invite you to our new office party.

A happy new year and good creative endeavors, from all of us here at Unfold.