Every agency knows the feeling. A new client signs, an existing one doubles their workload, and two of the team are on holiday the same week. Hiring takes months and adds fixed costs that are hard to carry when things quieten down again. Turning work away is not great either. White-label design support offers another way.
What is white-label design support?
White-label design means an external team produces work that you deliver to your clients under your own agency’s name. Your clients deal with you, and the work is presented as yours. Behind the scenes, you have extra design capacity on demand.
When it makes sense
- Overflow: your team is at capacity and work is backing up
- Production work: resizing, adapting and rolling out campaigns across formats frees your senior designers for higher-value creative
- Skills gaps: a client needs presentations, reports or print work that falls outside your team’s core strengths
- Holiday and sickness cover: keeping deadlines on track when the team is stretched
- Testing growth: taking on new clients before committing to a new hire
The benefits for agencies
Flexible capacity. Scale up during busy periods without carrying the cost of extra salaries in quiet months.
Predictable costs. With a monthly subscription, you know exactly what your extra capacity costs, which makes it easy to price into client work.
Protecting your margins. Production work done efficiently by a partner can be more profitable than tying up your own team.
Happier team. Your designers spend more time on the creative work they enjoy and less on repetitive resizing.
What to look for in a white-label partner
- Confidentiality: they never contact your clients and never show your clients’ work as their own
- Consistency: the same designers working on your account, so they learn your standards and your clients’ brands
- Clear communication and reliable turnaround times
- A broad range of skills across digital, print, presentations and documents
- Simple, transparent pricing
Making it work smoothly
Treat your white-label partner as an extension of your team. Share brand guidelines and examples of finished work, agree how requests will be briefed and reviewed, and keep one point of contact on your side. After a few weeks, the process becomes second nature.
Design support for agencies
Design Shake provides white-label design support for design and marketing agencies, giving you extra capacity for a simple monthly fee. Your clients stay yours. We just help you deliver more. New to the idea? Find out how a graphic design subscription works.
