Company name:  Spectrum Holidays

Client name: Malcolm Cain and Sophia Ainsworth

Location: Blackpool

First contact: June 2019

Package Chosen: 6 month business start up package

Business Launch: October 2019

Business Summary: To launch a company that would provide holidays for families with children that have autism.

Design Work: Logo, business cards, leaflets, social media images, website.

Company website: www.spectrum-holidays.com (designed and developed by Sandcress)

Introducing the client: Malcolm and Sophia have a 8 year old son, Luca.  Luca has autism and one of the more challenging elements of their family life is going on holiday.  They purchased their own holiday accommodation in the UK and adapted it to meet Luca's needs so that they could enjoy their holidays with as little stress as possible.  Having achieved that so successfully they decided they wanted to make similar accommodation available for other families with children on the autism spectrum across the country.  

The journey: As always, I kicked things off with a detailed consultation to get to know them a bit better, to explore their business idea and work out a plan of action to go forwards with.  Being able to complete the profit and loss forecast required a fair amount of research so we completed that first before moving on the business plan.  What they were wanting to achieve is huge (although incredibly exciting) - and was going to mean a significant amount of work so I felt it would be best to launch this business in stages.  It wouldn't be possible for this business to get started without a website and Malcolm and Sophia wanted me to get started on that asap.  I left them cracking on with additional research while I got that done and worked on the marketing strategy for them.  Their marketing strategy was multi-faceted and would mainly focus on social media.  I got a logo designed for them and followed that up with business cards, leaflets and preparing their social media.

The launch: We did the first launch of Spectrum Holidays in October 2019 with the putting live of their website which enabled us to find holiday home owners to get onto the site.  The number of accommodations grew quickly and very soon they were in a position to start promoting the company to families who may like to book.  It's still fairly early days for them but so far they're doing fantastically!  Watch this space!

Progress Update: Things picked up very quickly for Malcolm and Sophia.  They've done brilliantly in getting Spectrum going and it's proven incredibly popular with the many families who have autistic children (take a look at their social media following!) - in fact so much so that they are now looking to purchase more accommodation themselves as demand is far outstripping the availability they have.  They are also now turning their attention to the bigger plans they have for Spectrum (that has to stay under the hat for now).  September 2020

"We contacted Sandcress last year about an idea we had for our business and in the course of 6 months Cressida has helped us to create a fully operational, successful company. From the early days of not knowing where to start, keeping us motivated when things got hard and to still being on the other end of the phone for us today. We have been supported at every step and can't thank Sandcress enough!" Malcolm & Sophia