When several trades have to deliver together.
A 3D sculptor, a developer, a printer and a director do not describe the same problem with the same words. My job is to translate, to break things down, and to hold everyone's schedule at the same time.
A range of six products, from drawing to shelf
One of the projects I got off the ground from start to finish
The starting point
Creatures drawn by artists, and the idea of turning them into objects people buy. In between, nothing: no manufacturer, no painter, no costs, no sales channel. Nobody in the company had ever made a physical object.
What I did
I built the chain in the order it was missing, and recruited each link.
- Recruited the 3D printing supplier, then tested several processes before settling on resin
- Recruited a painter and framed what we expected of him, at a scale where a millimetre matters
- Ran the back-and-forth with the 3D sculptors: base, name plate and logo modelled in, not added afterwards
- Logged every correction, otherwise the same remark comes back three weeks later, and it does happen
- Prepared the market launch: costs, retail price, and the distribution channel
Where it ended up
On sale. Six figurines in blind boxes, with a rare premium piece and a gold figurine giving the right to an ultra-collector statue, so a real sales mechanic and not just a product. Made in Switzerland, retail price CHF 18.90, exclusive distribution through Mix-Image SA in Lausanne, and the project presented on RTS Couleur 3.
Four different trades in four pictures. That is what coordinating means.
A launch run from 10,000 kilometres away
Mobile game, alpha and beta phases, team in the Philippines
The starting point
An English-speaking development team in the Philippines, a seven-hour time difference, translations on hold, and tester feedback getting lost across three messaging apps. Nobody could say how many bugs were open.
Alpha phase, ten to fifteen testers
A small group. Each tester sent in a report separately, and I compiled all the feedback into PDF reports the technical team could work from. At that scale, compiling by hand was enough, and it had one merit: it forced me to read every piece of feedback.
Beta phase, more than 150 testers
The scale changes, so the tool has to change with it. Recruiting and community management moved to a Discord server, and compiling by hand became impossible.
- Set up a shared bug log on Google Sheets, so that developers and testers were finally looking at the same document
- Collected the feedback from Discord every day and entered it in the log, where it became work tickets for the developers
- Split the work into short cycles, with a written scope each time, rather than a "test it and tell us"
- Organised the rhythm around the time difference: what leaves in the evening has to be usable in their morning
In parallel, the full translation of the game into English was carried out and delivered.
Where it ended up
The international soft launch went out. 13 test cycles in total, a ramp-up from ten testers to more than a hundred and fifty, the game fully translated, and a bug log usable on both sides of the globe. I really enjoy telling this case in interviews, because it shows the exact moment when a method that worked stops working, and what you put in its place.
The same work, two set-ups. With ten testers, compiling by hand is enough and forces you to read every piece of feedback. With a hundred and fifty, the method itself has to change, otherwise it becomes the bottleneck.
Thirty projects, and what that really covers
"Thirty projects" means nothing until you say which ones. Here they are, by type, with the trades each one made me coordinate.
Product, digital, partnerships, events, all at once
| Type | What it covered | Who I coordinated |
|---|---|---|
| Physical product | Figurine range, branded clothing line, plush toy, puzzles, cups. From prototype to production order. | 3D sculptors, printer, painter, textile manufacturers |
| Digital product | Mobile game: alpha and beta cycles, translations, bug tracking, soft launch preparation. | Developers in the Philippines, testers, management |
| Content | Five animated mood videos, on which I was in charge of the music direction. | Multimedia designers, 2D and 3D animators |
| Partnerships | An inventory of everything that had been tried before me, with the costs involved and the real returns, to turn past attempts into arguments. This history was written down nowhere: I went and got it from former team members, who were the only ones who had it. Then first contact, meetings, a budgeted proposal and setting up the operation from A to Z. | Retail brands, events, management, former colleagues |
| Events and representation | Hosting delegations at our start-up hub, presenting the company to investors, trade fairs and business networking events. | External partners, schools, innovation network |
The five released videos of the Musical Atmosphere series. I was in charge of the music direction and of syncing the sound to the picture, in coordination with the multimedia designers. They are still online, so they can be checked.
How you keep thirty projects going without losing one
Not by memory. By a cascade that runs downwards: annual objectives broken down into quarters, then months, then weeks, then days, and an importance-urgency matrix to settle the order when everything looks like a priority. Weekly check-ins with each team, creative on one side and technical on the other, and a management meeting for the trade-offs that were above my level.
What I am proudest of
Getting physical products off the ground for a brand that only existed as illustrations and a mobile game: the figurine range, but also a clothing line, a plush toy, puzzles and cups. There was no manufacturer, no painter, no costing and no sales channel, and nobody in the company had ever made an object. Getting all the way to a shop shelf is the result I claim most, and it counts as much on the sales side as on the coordination side.
Then, presenting the company in English to investors and business angels, at an Innosuisse event, two months after starting the job. The work was not speaking in public: it was taking in the company's whole history and context so I could embody it rather than recite it. It is not my natural ground, and that is exactly why it counts.
What coordination changed, in practice
Before, trade-offs were decided on the latest conversation, and nobody had an overall view. Afterwards, everyone saw the same progress and decisions were made on facts. That is what made it workable to have up to fifteen contributors at the same time across in-house teams, manufacturers and subcontractors, without two of them waiting on each other without knowing it.
What these three cases have in common. None of them came down to a technical skill I had more of than the others. They came down to someone keeping the list, following up without putting people's backs up, and writing the decisions down somewhere they could be read again.
Operations and support
Three management tools built without anyone asking for them.
See the pageBusiness development
A pipeline built from scratch, and the method for finding the right person to talk to.
See the pageContact me
A question about one of these cases, or about the role where I can be useful to you.
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