KLAK KLAK might mean "that's brilliant" in French conversation, but, for Marc Guerriot and Chris Duff, it's their new business motto.
With IT and graphic design expertise, the duo want to bring corporate-level design to the SME business sector within a realistic budget.
Guerriot, who worked in Paris for cosmetic giants L'Oreal and Mabelline on the design and packaging of their
leading brands, came to Scotland to improve his English in 2002. Despite a salary drop from £3,000 to £600 a month as a waiter, he drew portraits of staff's children for free.
"My brother was working in Channings Hotel in Edinburgh and I got a job as a waiter. Marco Truffelli, the managing director of the Townhouse Group at the time, saw some of my work and asked me to draw his children. I grasped the opportunity. The hotel group didn't have a website and I worked on designs over the weekend for the whole group before meeting him. He loved it, called an urgent meeting with the marketing team and offered me a job as the graphic designer working across the website, branding and photography," said Guerriot.
Deciding to branch out on his own, he joined forces with Duff, a former technical director of Adventi, to create the Edinburgh based Klak Klak business.
Duff said: "We are just over a year old and have a turnover of £500,000. We employ six staff and are looking at new areas we can move into. We can offer the whole package, from branding, web design and packaging to video and photographs. Nothing is outsourced.
"You don't need a big team to survive and we can keep budgets flexible."
Clients already include whisky firm Bowmore, lighting designers Otimo, hairdressers BeBaBoom and the Scottish Youth Parliament.
Duff added: "A company's brand is one of the first impressions potential clients see. SMEs need to value the investment in their design in the same way they value the importance of employing the services of a solicitor or an accountant when starting up a new business or running an established company."
According to the Scottish Executive, the uptake of broadband at the end of 2005 will rise from around 0.8 million connections to around 1.8 million by 2015. Duff says this represents a huge opportunity for businesses to represent their company's services and products to an ever-increasing customer base.
