How to reposition a company in 60 days (hint: it's not impossible)

Last week we launched a new website at Tropic , but it was way more than a new website. It was a brand refresh. It was a shift in #messaging and #positioning. It was an evolution in our products and packaging. It was a new CMS. It was one of the most challenging projects of my life. But also one of the most rewarding.?

Why? Because we did it all in-house—and all in 60 days.?

Sometimes you just have to have a little faith and a lot of perseverance to make the impossible possible. After all, who doesn’t love an underdog story?

I'm sharing ours because I'm so proud of our team and company. Hopefully, it can serve as #motivation for the next person that's faced with an impossible task. Life is full of them.

If you want to skip to the public-facing announcement, you can see what our CEO, David Campbell , had to say about how and why Tropic is changing for the better.

Keep reading if you're looking for the story behind the story.

In late 2022, we started researching and exploring the “best of the best” marketing agencies to help rejuvenate Tropic's brand and website. Despite having evolved into an end-to-end #spendmanagement platform, we were still publicly associated with our service-only roots. We needed to show the world that we’d arrived as a #saas product.

So we met with all the agencies. They told us the project would take 3-6 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tropic is a company built on urgency. Six months wasn’t an option.?

What’s more, we would have been stuck doing stakeholder interviews and mood boards weeks into the process, with timelines of two months just to get to wireframes. Everything was additional time and money. Want some custom illustrations? That’s an add-on. Need help with content? That’s an add-on. Need the site actually built? That’s an add-on.?

One of our core values at Tropic is #Execute. None of this sounded like execution to me…

In late February, I met with our CEO, David Campbell, to set expectations for the scope and timeline of this project—which hadn’t even officially kicked off. “What’s the shortest timeframe possible?” he asked.

I replied, “June 31st (end of Q2) if we start literally today, and even that is probably impossible.”?

He then proceeded to negotiate harder than a SaaS renewal at the end of the fiscal year, “Great, so let’s call it May 1?” Leave it to Dave to blur the lines between impossible and possible.?

We had just over 60 days to turn a dream into a reality, starting from zero. The only way to accomplish it was to roll up our sleeves and take ownership of our destiny. We know our business and vision better than any third party. And we have an amazing team that was excited to put their fingerprints all over it. We just had to get to work.?

Dave and I outlined the sitemap and started working on all new copy—well before we had any wireframes or design direction. We rewrote every page on the site plus dozens more that didn’t exist yet.?

I've never met a CEO so eager to collaborate on content or pound on the keys—even if it was midnight on a Saturday night. I’ve never seen a Series B company where the #CEO and Head of #Marketing wrote every word on the website themselves.?

Tropic’s Design team started with a clean slate, building a new style guide from scratch. They nailed our fonts, colors, and creative direction. It was bright, bold, and beautiful. They even (without asking) gave our logo a pixel-perfect overhaul.?

Our CEO described it best when he said: “We’ve chosen a new color palette and gradient set that we hope evokes sand dunes on a beach at night—right where we want to be, and where we want to take you. This is our vision of #procurement paradise.”?

By the end of March, the #contentstrategy and #design direction were really taking shape, but there was one HUGE outstanding unknown. How the hell were we going to build the site??

Our website was built on WordPress, which everyone hated. We could try to update the current site, but since we started from scratch with the site map, content, and design, why not do the same with the CMS??

I sent a note to our Head of Design on 3/30, “I’m going to kick myself for saying this - I think we should find a killer dev shop to just rebuild our site in Webflow.” With 30 days left on the clock…

Little did I know, every “killer dev shop” that I talked to in the days following would shoot me down, saying they couldn’t get started immediately and couldn’t build the site in 30 days. “This is impossible,” they said. I’m starting to realize most people misunderstand that word…

So on 4/3, I created a blank Webflow site, found a solo freelancer that agreed to guide us, and got to work.?

The month of April was crazy. The design and marketing teams were humming like a crew team rowing in perfect unity. Though the final week felt more like a Wall Street trading floor from the ‘90s. Everyone pitched in until the closing bell.

I’m extremely proud of the company, and not for the obvious reasons. In this economy, businesses need to be lean and #scrappy. Time and money are the most valuable resources that can’t be wasted. It’s why Tropic exists in the first place, and boy did we eat our own dog food with this project.?

The site looks beautiful. The feedback and reactions have been fantastic. We got to be as creative as we wanted, and from marketing to design to our CEO, we can all feel proud of doing the work ourselves, our way. This isn’t the end of the project—it’s only the beginning.

Huge shout out to the Marketing and Design teams at Tropic. This wouldn't have happened without you Taryn Stark , Hillary Burson , Brandon Pham , Jess McCuan , Heather Quitos, MBA and Jennifer Chan .

Not only did we make the impossible possible, but we didn’t skip a beat with the other company projects and initiatives. You all are incredible!

Oh, and if you want to check out the finished product, head over to www.tropicapp.io. Shoot me a message if you ever have any questions about Tropic, this project, or marketing in general. ??