The journey from a global website business
to a community of creators, to an inclusive creative agency.
Ngrane consists of a great core team, with a supportive like-minded community of freelancers. We work internationally and locally in the Netherlands, with flexible work arrangements. We focus on design sprints, inclusive design, new ways of working, diversity and growing together. We’re driven by personal values, friendship, freedom, love, and respect. Ngrane is open to controversial ideas, up for challenges and is fighting for a better, more inclusive world. But of course, Ngrane wasn’t always like this.
Curious to know a bit more about the journey of Ngrane?
Read on! 👇🏽
A short history
Back in 2009, Ngrane was founded as BlezzedMedia, a digital design agency. With about a 1000 projects in the Netherlands, the United States, the Caribbean, and Dubai – Blezzedmedia was a successful global company. The workforce consisted exclusively of U.S. and Dutch part-time freelancers and technology partners from Bangladesh.
By 2017, the company rebranded, focusing on growth in the local Dutch market. Ngrane also expanded its local freelance workforce to over 100 members, becoming a like-minded community of creators. Ngrane offered freelancers the freedom of freelancing while catering to other traditional employment needs such as a physical workplace, colleagues, training, and other traditional employment benefits.
The founders, Stephen & David, envisioned that Ngrane could extend its freelance workforce to a digital platform, focusing on improving work satisfaction by creating unique matches between freelance teams and projects. They hypothesized that the future of work would involve more autonomy and flexibility for freelancers. However, expanding from a digital agency to a platform business model presented strategic challenges that resulted in a change of strategy. So unfortunately, the idea was put “on hold”.
Shifting focus
In 2018 the priorities shifted to building a more traditionally employed team, in order to create a more stable foundation to scale and pursue its platform vision in the future. And of course, not long after – Covid-19 entered the stage. This pushed back the platform vision a bit more and pushed Ngrane to make certain decisions. No more office at WeWork, very limited physical meetings, and a focus on a healthy core team.
The freelance community still supported us in several projects in this period, and we will definitely continue to work with our community. ♥️
While the lockdown wasn’t necessarily a great period, it also wasn’t necessarily a bad one. We learned a lot about flexibility, the ability to aptly work from home and how to connect, even with a physical distance. We managed to remain human, despite all the challenges.
Ngrane took the time to reassess – go back to the core and reflect.
The reflection brought change. A new proposition, a new focus on [inclusive] design and a will to select clients on the basis of doing good.
From now on, we’ll focus on inclusive design. It matches our genuine interest in people, their needs and their behavior. This only fuels our passion to turn our work into products that work for as many people as possible.
Why not all, you might ask? We recognize that we cannot manage to include all perspectives. There are unlimited perspectives – that’s why inclusive design is always a work in progress. We acknowledge that and it simply encourages us to never stop reinventing.
As the core team of Ngrane, we started to be inclusive from the inside out. On our team outing we dug deep into our own cores. We discussed trauma, bruises, and growing pains. Everyone shared their perspective, making the proposition personal and close to our hearts. Human, personal, and intimate. This makes us stronger as a team, ready for challenge. Focused on the future and where we want to go.
We’re excited for the journey. Join us and keep in touch.
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Let’s grow together.