“Nice Office gives small studios a designed workplace at a fixed fee, in six weeks.”
Nadia Mercer
on “fixed fee”
Fixed-fee promises hide labour. Where are the scope boundaries?
Julian Ross
on “designed”
Reads as a commoditised makeover package. Protect the craft positioning.
Priya Sethi
on “six weeks”
The promise converts. Give the page a next step to capture it.
Candor convenes a board of expert personas that reads your thinking before the market does, and tells you exactly which words won’t survive contact.
01Share your material
Briefs, decks, mood boards and your live site. The board reads what you're shipping.
Harriet Lowe
Cautious looking for the price
Small Business Founder
“Beautiful work. Two scrolls in, I still can’t find what Nice Office costs.”
throughline.studio
02Pick your personas
Bring your own people, take ours, or start from what 43,000 specifiers did last year. None of them work for you, so none of them flatter you.
03The deliberation
Positions are formed alone, then argued. Every point on the line is something somebody said.
Nadia Mercer
Opposed · Independent · 4
Studio Operations Director
“A fixed fee with undefined deliverables is a margin leak, not a product. Every 'small extra' comes out of our hours, and six weeks assumes no client ever stalls a decision.”
04The takeaway deck
Every evaluation ends in a deck you can act on, and a verdict that doesn't hedge.
“Small studios are buying certainty, and the fixed fee is the first honest offer of it. But certainty needs boundaries: publish the scope with the price, prove the six weeks on two pilots, and give the page one clear next step. Sell the certainty.”
Launch Nice Office, a fixed-fee workplace design service for small creative companies · the board’s verdict
Consensus
3
- 01
Certainty is the product: the fixed fee is what small studios are buying. Lead with the number
- 02
Scope boundaries must be published with the price: deliverables, exclusions, and change-order rates on one sheet
- 03
Name a senior designer in every engagement, or the studio brand erodes
Risks
4
- 01
Scope creep
A fixed fee plus undefined deliverables means the studio absorbs every overrun, and the margin leak compounds with volume
- 02
Craft dilution
A productised offer can read as templated makeovers, dragging the studio's bespoke positioning and future fees down with it
- 03
The six-week promise
The timeline assumes instant client decisions; one stalled approval breaks the calendar, and the reputation with it
- 04
Capacity collision
If Nice Office sells, it competes with flagship studio projects for the same senior designers, so popularity becomes the problem
Next steps
3
- 01
Publish the scope sheet beside the price: deliverables, exclusions and change-order rates
- 02
Run two founding-client pilots at launch pricing to prove the six-week promise before it goes on the homepage
- 03
Add one next step, 'book a walkthrough', so the page turns interest into a meeting
Held open
2
- 01
Six weeks is marketing until two pilots prove it. Launching the promise unproven puts the studio's name behind a number ops doesn't control
Nadia Mercer - 02
If demand spikes, Nice Office competes with the studio's flagship work for the same people. Decide now which work gets refused
Julian Ross
The deck leaves with you as a board-ready PDF, for the meeting where you’ll need it. Every takeaway carries its attribution, so the room knows who said what.
nice-office-evaluation.pdf · 6 pages · 1.2 MB ↓
05After the evaluation
The deck isn't the end. Pull one persona aside, reconvene the room, or revise the brief and run it again.
A private thread
with Nadia Mercer
You
If we publish the scope sheet with change-order rates, does your opposed soften?
Nadia Mercer
To cautious. The sheet protects margin on paper, but the six-week promise is still unproven. Run the two pilots before you print it on the homepage.
You
And if a pilot overruns?
Nadia Mercer
Then the fee was wrong, not the model. Reprice before launch. Once the number is public, you'll eat the difference for a year.
Ask Nadia anything
↵The room
4 personas present
You
One thing we fix before the page goes live. Go.
Julian Ross
Say 'designed, not templated' above the fold. The fear is a McOffice. Kill it in the first line.
Priya Sethi
A 'book a walkthrough' button. Interest without a next step is just decoration.
Harriet Lowe
The number. I decide with the budget in front of me, so put it in front of me.
Ask the room
↵06What they know
Every take stands on live research, and on everything Candor knows about your company.
Nadia Mercer · Studio Operations Director
“Six weeks is brave when a quarter of fit-outs overrun their scope1, and this studio has no slack until Q42.”
Live research
cited from the web
1 in 4
of fit-outs overrun their scope
programme data
Company Knowledge
what Candor has learned about Throughline
6
active projects, no slack until Q4
utilisation data
Put your next decision to the board.