Six years of Oase Creative: what I learned

On 4 June 2020 I registered Oase Creative at the Chamber of Commerce. Today it turns six. We have built more than 200 brands, and most of them are still standing.

This is not a sales story. It is the honest one: where I started, what I got wrong, what I learned, and why, two days from now when I turn thirty, I am more excited about the next six years than ever.

It started with a flyer

As a kid I got hooked on making things. Photoshop, Cinema 4D, After Effects, video editing. I learned it to cut Call of Duty montages, build 3D intros, and make YouTube backgrounds. That creative drive was always there. A design education after that was not even a choice, it felt obvious.

In Arnhem I met the right people. My best friend worked as a DJ, and that is how I rolled into making flyers for events and clubs. There it sat side by side: the creativity and the hustle around it. Landing jobs, standing for something, making people happy with something good. Putting a brand feeling on the page. That already worked back then, and it gave me the taste for it.

From free design to a Chamber of Commerce registration

In 2019 I had an e-commerce brand with a partner. That partner did not pull his weight, and in the end we wound the company down. But in that year I met dozens of e-commerce founders, and almost all of them would have benefited from better design.

So I did what felt most logical: I made free work. In the communities around all those e-commerce courses I sent people voice messages. "I saw your brand, it could look better, can I make something for it for free?" That is how I built a portfolio. And at a certain point I could start charging for it.

It got busier. I built my own website, horribly ugly, when I look at it now I have to laugh, and on 4 June 2020 I made it official. What started as listing design quickly grew into a full agency. Because I can do more than listings. The services I did not produce myself but did understand, 3D, video, photography, I brought in from creative friends around me. That is how Oase became an agency, not a one-man thing.

The first client who is still a client

Who my very first client was, I do not remember exactly. But there is one worth naming: Tim Voet of LifeWise. To this day he is still a client.

Tim is one of the few from that early e-commerce wave who is still standing, with the same passion and intensity for his brand. We still help him: his Shopify, all the photography, the videos, the website, SEO, manuals, packaging, cards, and more. That collaboration has run for years, and I still get joy out of it. Tim makes me think. Clients like that are what make the work worth it.

The hardest part was everything, and the hardest year is now

I was 23 when I started Oase Creative. No money, no knowledge, only motivation and a lot of discipline. I am assertive, I never thought about what it would look like if it did not work. There was only one option in my head, and that was to succeed. There were plenty of uncertain stretches, but they never stopped me.

Still, the heaviest of these six years is the one I am in now. The developments move incredibly fast, and almost everyone now builds their brand with systems. I see the result every day: brands have started to look the same. People invest little time in the brand system itself.

I want to be sharp here, because it often gets misread. A tool is not the problem. A tool is only as good as the system and the judgment you put into it. Build a strong brand system, a good pipeline, and smart automation, and you can make beautiful work with the same technology. But set the bar low and settle for the first decent result, and you get generic work back. I see clients generate their own photos or click together a brand style, and it often disappoints, not because the technology cannot do it, but because there is no creative direction and no judgment in it. The value sits in the system you feed it, not in the button you press.

What I learned about building brands

Anything can work if you have thought it through well. I believe in full creative freedom in color and form, there is no right or wrong. But bad logos do exist, and so do bad choices. They happen when your brand does not match what you want to project and what the client experiences when they come across you.

That is where my strongest conviction sits: a good start is half the work. The first stone, the foundation, decides how strong the rest can become. You do not want a shaky foundation. Real branding needs a creative eye and a commercial one aimed at conversion, tuned to the platform, the audience, and the mission.

What most e-commerce founders overlook is consistency. They launch a product or two, and a year later they already have to rebrand because there is no line between the listings, the website, the packaging, and the manual. Invest a little more at the start, and your brand is easier to scale later and cheaper in the long run, also when you want to expand internationally. That is why we educate our clients. Not to be difficult, but because cutting corners costs you the brand you could have become.

Stopping was never an option

Of course there were moments I thought: should I stop with this? After a few bad months, when fewer jobs come in, when the developments move too fast. That comes with running a business.

But stopping is not a choice. When you start something, you finish it, that is something I was raised with. A story only ends when you very consciously choose for it to, not because you got lazy and the house of cards collapses. My story is far from done. I am smarter than I have ever been, and my skillset has grown enormously in a year and a half.

And there are two goals on the table. Make Oase Creative the biggest agency brand in the Netherlands when it comes to building e-commerce brands. And with the software we built, reach a thousand users, to make other agencies better and tie a network of agencies together.

The mistake that cost me a client

I once handled a video job too casually. A few shots were ruined, and the client was not happy. Whatever I did to put it right, it was not enough, and in the end they asked whether all the work we had made for them could be taken offline. A shame, because the coolest work we had delivered was genuinely strong. Only that one video fell short.

I get that, and I learned from it. Those are the things you do wrong once and then never let happen again. There have also been clients who were rude, or even aggressive over small things, that sometimes comes with the territory when characters do not match. It does not make you smaller. It makes you smarter and stronger.

In the quiet stretches I build

Another mistake, in the early days: in the quiet stretches I did too little. Not working on innovation, outreach, marketing, or improving systems and products. That is exactly when everything should have been improved.

That is what I would pass on to my younger self. When it is quiet, fix the infrastructure of your business. Do not sit and wait, and do not be afraid or unsure. With the right intentions it works out in the end, but only if you keep building in that calm instead of sitting still.

Why I am now building the software and the agents

Running a design agency means fighting fragmentation. Your files are in one place, your download links in another, your communication somewhere else again, your project management in yet another tool, your invoicing and your forms separate from that, and then you also have to maintain your website. Eight separate tools to keep one agency running.

That is why I am building Oase software with Lam Hoang. One platform where everything lives: files, communication, invoicing, project management, forms, and a feedback system where clients can respond directly on the design with annotations. There is a client portal in it, which almost no agency has, and a built-in marketing layer that turns the context of a project into content. Through multi-tenancy you can own one agency and be a client or team member at another with the same account. That way agencies can work with each other instead of alongside each other.

And then there is Milo: the agent system I set up alongside this platform, which runs a large part of the agency operation. The idea behind it is simple. Why still log into a CMS if your agent can manage it, send you a message, and send back a screenshot to show how it looks? It is easier than ever to let systems talk to each other. Build your own unique system, invest time in it, and take the micromanagement out of your day. Few founders right now have systems that complement each other this well. That, as far as I am concerned, is a game changer.

Where product photography is going

Honestly: I believe the simple product photo, the pack shot on a white background, is largely going to be generated. I would rather use a system for that. But lifestyle photography is a different story. Scouting models and locations, orchestrating a shoot, steering the art direction the right way, that needs human input. On location you make images that feel real, and people feel that difference.

That is where our shift sits. We lean harder into branding guidelines and into building systems, so brands can work with generation themselves. But the brands themselves we build with human hands, set up so it becomes a creative, honest, and commercially converting whole, and not the umpteenth brand with the same buttons, fonts, and colors. It is on us to make what a system cannot. We are the ideal input to make a system succeed.

What I am most grateful for

For the people around me. The people who are still here, who help me, who believe in me. The chances I have been given, all my clients, the brands I have been able to build, the chances I did not let slip. That is what keeps me going, whatever it costs. Because I believe in myself, in the idea, and in the ambitions.

What I would tell my 23-year-old self

One thing: dare to share sooner. In six years I put almost nothing online, what I did, for whom, and why. I should have picked up building in public much earlier, and it would probably have been incredibly valuable. I am making that professionalization step now, and it is immediately what I am most proud of: showing what I can do and standing behind it myself.

And beyond that: just start, and see where the ship runs aground. The course matters less than the feeling you are chasing, that feeling ultimately sets the direction. Act on your gut, as long as you are sure of your case and stand behind your choices. Once you make a call, it is made. Be honest with yourself, and when something goes wrong, do not get angry about it, because that is exactly what makes you better.

Two days from now I turn thirty. Smarter and more mature than I have ever been. What I want to show is that a young guy like me can put enormous value into a business, because I know a lot about a lot of subjects. A generalist, but across the whole field of branding a specialist. And what I am not myself, I have the right connections and partners for. With the right person you turn a team into a dream team.

What I hope people feel

When people talk about Oase, I hope they talk about the team, about the work we made, and about a personal experience and connection with the owner who helped them. That is the goal: take everyone by the hand and personally guide them through the whole journey of building a brand that also works commercially and converts for the founder, and in doing so raises the value of that brand.

I hope they feel what I try to give them. When I look at what is out there about us online, I dare to say we are doing alright at it.

Where Oase stands six years from now

By then we are still the same branding agency, but with bigger, better clients and stronger brands. The people around me have grown along with it and stand in the places they dared to dream of. The software has tens of thousands of design agencies registered, and we have built the platform out to where it should be. Running an agency is then more fun, easier, cheaper, and more connected, so everyone can build a business for a fair price with the right tools in hand.

Summing up six years in one sentence did not work for me, and I will admit that honestly. But if I have to try anyway: never stop believing in the feeling you had when you started.