Beyond the €30 000
Oxipack, a Dutch company operating in non-destructive leak detection, came to us after a bad experience with the previous provider. And I mean genuinely bad. The guy overcharged them, did not deliver what was promised, and actually broke their website in the process. Not a small bug. Broken badly enough that they had to roll back to a previous version of the site just to make it usable again. That is what we were working with when we first got introduced.
We started small, which is often how the best relationships begin. Just socials. Nothing complex, just consistent work delivered properly every time. And from there things started to grow, not because we were pushing for scope, but because trust was building alongside the output. Social media became a website conversation, which became a full Webflow rebuild and redesign. The Webflow work opened a door to 3D renders, which they needed for their machines and their platform. 3D and motion work grew into broader production support, and production support, over time, became the whole thing.
Today we are effectively their design department and their marketing department. We are the creative team they do not have in-house, but operate as if we are. And none of that happened because of a smart pitch. It happened because we kept delivering and they kept trusting us with more.
The Subscription Conversation
About a year into working together, we sat down to talk about how the model was set up. At that point we were on hourly billing, €35 an hour, and they were averaging around 118 hours a month. Projected over a full year, that is roughly €52,500. Not unreasonable on the surface, but there was a real friction problem underneath it that was costing both of us more than the money reflected.
The issue with hourly billing is that it puts a mental tax on every request. Before anything gets briefed, someone is already calculating hours. Is this in scope? Do we need a new quote? Should we loop in finance before we even start? That kind of friction does not just slow things down, it changes the relationship. It turns a creative partnership into a series of micro-negotiations, and at some point the energy that should be going into the work starts going into the admin around it instead.
So we proposed a subscription model. One flat monthly fee, one annual invoice, no time tracking and no scope friction. Just work. The billing becomes invisible and both sides focus on delivery.
There were two things that made the decision easy for them. The first was two months free, which is how the annual plan works at Nexubis. When you look at the yearly cost versus paying month to month, the saving is obvious and immediate. The second thing was timing. Our hourly rate was going up, and this was a genuine window for them to lock in the current rate before the increase kicked in. We were transparent about that, not as a tactic, but because by that point we had been working together for a year and the trust on both sides was real. They knew what we delivered. The conversation was short and the answer came quickly.
The Numbers
Over the first year on the subscription model they used 1,285 hours of work across eight months. At our standard hourly rate that would have cost €44,975. They paid €30,000. That is a saving of €14,975 and an effective rate of €23.35 per hour, which is 33% below what they would have been billed on the old model.
But the number I find more interesting is the usage figure itself. On the old hourly model they were averaging 118 hours a month. On the subscription they averaged 161 hours a month. They were not just spending less. They were getting 35% more output at the same time. And that makes complete sense when you think about how the friction disappeared. Nobody was holding back requests because they were worried about the clock. Nobody was shrinking briefs to keep hours low.
The question stopped being "can we afford to do this" and became "what should we build next." That shift is worth more than the savings figure.
What the Numbers Do Not Show
The €14,975 is easy to point at in a slide, but the value that does not fit into a spreadsheet is probably what matters more. Priority production capacity. Scope changes handled without renegotiation. Faster turnaround because we already know the brand inside out and do not need to be re-briefed on fundamentals every time something new comes in. Embedded creative thinking rather than transactional task execution. One partner who is accountable for consistency across every asset they produce, from the website to the 3D renders to the motion work to the social content.
When you are working with a vendor on a project basis, every engagement starts cold. You have to rebuild context, re-establish tone, re-explain the brand. When the relationship is ongoing and properly embedded, that cost disappears and the work gets sharper with every passing month because the context compounds.
Year Two
The renewal was straightforward. The rate went up, around 30% higher than the year before because the previous deal had been locked in before our pricing increased. They acknowledged it, there was no pushback, and they made clear they understood the previous year had been great value at the rate they had locked in. They could still see the return clearly at the new number.
What I found more telling was how the renewal call ended. It did not end at the renewal. It turned into a conversation about what else we could take on together, and by the end of it they were adding a second contract on top of the existing design retainer, covering a different part of their business entirely. We did not pitch it. They brought it up. Two years in, the relationship is deeper, the trust is higher, and the scope is wider than when we started. That does not happen by being a vendor who ships work and sends invoices. It happens when the relationship genuinely matters to both sides.
The Actual Point
I think about Oxipack a lot when people ask me why we push the annual retainer model so hard. The data makes the case clearly enough, €14,975 saved, 35% more output, 33% lower effective rate, a renewal with zero friction, and an expanded scope going into year three. But the numbers are really just a way of measuring something more fundamental that was already there.
The real reason this works is that both sides stopped thinking like a client and a supplier and started thinking like a team. When that happens, the work gets better, the relationship gets stronger, and the value compounds in ways that are genuinely hard to replicate on a project-by-project basis. One-off work has its place, but it is not the same thing as a relationship built over time, and most founders who have experienced both know exactly what I mean.
The best clients we have are not the ones who needed the cheapest option. They are the ones who understood that consistency, context, and trust are worth committing to. And once both sides are properly aligned around that, leaving actually starts to feel like the expensive choice.
