In March 2024, our client, Oleg Drobot, approached us to launch the media brand ELLE in Uzbekistan. This wasn’t our first collaboration; we’ve partnered on various initiatives for over five years, so we had no doubt even for a second.
Gemina Publishing secured an agreement with ELLE’s headquarters to bring their brand to a new market. Oleg took on the challenge of becoming the CEO of ELLE Oʻzbekiston, with a commitment to launch the project by June 1, 2024, with just over two months to prepare and start entirely from scratch. Our mission was clear: to help him launch and hit the deadline perfectly.
This project went beyond digital. ELLE Oʻzbekiston includes a website, printed magazine, events, photoshoots, and collaborations with models and fashion industry figures.
While the client side managed the broader scope of the project, our team was tasked with launching a website of the same caliber as ELLE’s other markets in three languages. This was an atypical task for our studio, as we specialize in UI/UX design, graphic design, branding, 3D motion, etc.
However, Oleg knew our founders had experience with development, testing, marketing, and other skills needed to launch a website from start to finish. With this experience, we couldn’t refuse to assist our long-term client with this exciting challenge. The journey ahead included everything from choosing the right domain to creating video tutorials for using the admin panel. But let’s take it step by step in our fashion design case study.
To effectively manage the ELLE Oʻzbekiston project, we tailored our approach to meet the client’s needs, ensuring seamless collaboration and efficient progress:
We organized a management environment that included the client, his team, our CEO, and our team members: designers and managers. This ensured all stakeholders were aligned and communication was clear from the start.
We opted to use Trello with a Kanban board for task management, even though our typical tool is Jira. The switch was made to simplify processes and accommodate the client’s team, who were less familiar with complex tools like Jira.
We used Telegram for communication, as it is widely used in Uzbekistan. Although we usually rely on Slack, using Telegram ensured greater convenience and faster communication for the client’s team.
We scheduled one regular weekly meeting with all team members to discuss overall progress. To maintain close coordination, we added two more daily meetings – one with the development team and one with the marketing team – and provided daily updates via Telegram to keep everyone synchronized.
We kicked off with deep research and design development, focusing on a UI/UX that truly embodied ELLE’s brand identity. At the same time, we utilized our network to find contractors for development and SEO optimization quickly.
These steps allowed us to move quickly and ensured excellent process synchronization. We defined clear responsibilities for each team member while staying perfectly aligned in our efforts.
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