Shepherding work
Disciple Design moves beyond churches, but remains selective about clients
Strategies
By Michael Sheffield, Memphis Business Journal
Friday, March 21, 2008
It isn't often that a company can pick the clients it works for and survive, but Memphis-based Disciple Design has done just that.
Disciple Design, which was founded in 1993 by Craig Thompson, works for its share of nonprofit and church clients, like New York-based United Methodist Committee on Relief, but also works for clients like the West Clinic and Collierville-based Floratine Biosciences.
Thompson says the company's wariness in selecting clients isn't meant to be or sound elitist, he just feels that if he is going to do the best work he can do, it needs to be for a company that he has no conflicted feelings about.
"I think about it as 'would this be someplace I would take my kids?'" he says.
Thompson started Disciple as a side project in 1991 when he and some designer friends were bemoaning the lack of quality marketing materials for churches and nonprofits.
"We got to thinking that someone should do something about it and a friend of mine said we should do something," he says.
After that decision, Thompson designed the company's logo -- two pencils formed into a cross -- and with the blessing of his boss at The Malmo Agency (now Archer Malmo), Thompson and his friend did pro bono work for churches and nonprofits on nights and weekends.
After leaving The Malmo Agency for Weinstock White and Associates, Thompson continued to do Disciple jobs on the side. However, when Weinstock was sold to an out-of-town firm, he decided to strike out on his own and Disciple became his full-time job.
"There were certain things the new owners wanted to do that I didn't feel comfortable with, so I left," he says.
With no clients, shared office space and $2,000 that he and his wife were saving for a car, Thompson started the company full time.
"We had gone through a financial planning class and that was all the money we had," he says. "I was scared, but I went over the cliff."
Thompson's first office had a drawing board and no computer, so he relied on the designer friend he shared the space with for that until he could get his own computer.
What he did have, however, were the skills to get business from First South Credit Union, his very first client. Thompson says that first client led to others, including Navpress, which prints the most popular line of Bibles in the world.
At its highest point, Thompson says Disciple Design had revenues of more than $1 million, mostly due to having one or two large clients. Revenue dropped in 2006 to $850,000, but increased to $948,000 in 2007. Thompson says he fully expects the company to be back to the million-dollar mark in the next couple of years. Disciple currently has seven employees.
Despite the company's name and reputation for working with churches and nonprofits, 40% of Disciple Design's clients are for-profit companies, while the company's nonprofit clients are some of the larger nonprofits in the country.
Michelle Scott, communications director for UMCOR, which is the global united humanitarian wing of the United Methodist Church, says Disciple designs everything from the annual reports to the calendars it sends out to clients and church members every year. Disciple also developed UMCOR's logo and branding campaign.
"They get what we're about and they come up with innovative designs to explain our work," Scott says. "I've never met Craig face-to-face because we always communicate via e-mail or on the phone, but I feel like I know them very well."
Scott says the fact that Disciple Design is a Christian organization means a lot to UMCOR as well.
Thompson says the quality of Disciple's work and the company's clients allow him to be a little pickier when choosing clients, but he stresses that the company doesn't only want to work with other Christian organizations. It just has to be the right fit.
"We don't think we're too good for anyone, but we want to know that we're giving the client the best work possible," he says. "If we can't do that, not only are we shortchanging ourselves, but we're shortchanging the client. That's not what we're about."
Disciple Design
President: Craig Thompson
Founded: 1993
Employees: 7
Address: 390 S. Main
Phone: (901) 386-4299
Web site: www.discipledesign.com
msheffield@bizjournals.com | 259-1722
