BINGHAMTON — Ewelina Zajac came to America as a college-exchange student in 2002. She spent the summer at Scott’s Family Resort on Oquaga Lake, before returning to her native Poland to complete a master’s degree with honors in industrial and graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw. She graduated on a Thursday in February 2004 and boarded a plane for Binghamton on Sunday with $300 in cash and a backpack containing her wardrobe.

Despite her halting English and no network of business associates, Zajac landed a job in 2004 at MeadWestvaco (now called ACCO Brands) in Sidney (Delaware County), starting as a junior designer and advancing to a position as a senior-designer of product lines sold in superstores. Later that year, she married Michael Holdrege. In 2011, she joined Modern Marketing Concepts (MMC) as a senior designer. On Jan. 1, 2013, Zajac-Holdrege (Holdrege) left MMC to work full time at her own company — Holdrege Design, LLC, and rebranded in 2014 as a d/b/a called Idea Kraft.

Holdrege’s decision to immigrate to the U.S. and start a business is a pattern long recognized but only recently documented. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation reports in 2012 that immigrants are twice as likely as native-born Americans to become entrepreneurs and more than half of American companies valued at $1 billion or more were started by immigrants. A 2010 study concludes that 40 percent of the Fortune-500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. In 2014, 28.5 percent of new entrepreneurs were immigrants, up from 13.3 percent in 1997. And between 2006 and 2012, one-quarter of the engineering and technology companies that started in the U.S. included at least one key founder who was an immigrant. In Silicon Valley, the number is 50 percent.

The 2015 “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor” report issued jointly by Babson College and Baruch College says that first-generation Americans view their environment through a different lens, seeing unique opportunities. The report goes on to say that immigrant business owners have an entrepreneurial attitude best described as fearless determination, with 59 percent believing they are capable of running their own business.

Holdrege’s business start
“I didn’t launch my business cold turkey,” says Holdrege, Idea Kraft’s president and creative director. “While working at Westvaco and MMC, I had done some freelancing, so I had a few clients. What convinced me to work full time at my own business was a contract from E-Z RED to build the brand for the company. I didn’t have any business education, experience, or recipe for success, but I wasn’t concerned. Maybe that’s because I grew up in a family where my parents and an uncle were entrepreneurs. I just felt that the only thing worse than starting something and failing was the regret of not trying something.” The company she started now employs seven people full time and leases 1,500 square feet of office space at the refurbished train station in downtown Binghamton. The Business Journal estimates that Idea Kraft generates about $1 million in annual revenue.

Holdrege, who is the company’s sole stockholder, launched her new venture as a full-service, creative studio specializing in branding, identity, packaging, and website design. “Idea Kraft is not a traditional agency,” she explains. “We are a niche agency, and that helps to differentiate us from the competition. My passion is creating brands that stand up in the marketplace, whether it’s for a startup or a company trying to reinvent itself. I’m not a trendy person; I want to create timeless brands … Idea Kraft’s approach is to inventory all of the ‘touch points’ a company has with its customers and then plan a campaign that will coordinate the branding effort. To accomplish this, we need to listen carefully to the client and understand the company and its goals.

“Our clients recognize the power of authentic branding and frequently retain us not just to create the branding campaign but also to monitor the brand on an ongoing basis,” Holdrege adds. “The business model may start with being paid to create the campaign, but it often leads to a retainer where Idea Kraft keeps a close watch on the company’s social media, search-engine optimization, updating of the website, and even its sales pitches and marketing collateral.”

The list of clients who have retained Idea Kraft to help them rebrand is long and diverse. E-Z Red, whose contract with Holdrege convinced her to launch her own company, is a leader in lighting, hand tools, and battery products, and also is a Caterpillar licensee of Cat Lights. The company is both a manufacturer and distributor. MMC is a global sales-optimization company that integrates the client’s assets with MMC’s platform, data, and staff. Motili offers a single point of contact for national products and accounts, as well as skilled contractors.

Idea Kraft’s customer list also includes the Pleasant Valley Wine Company, popularly known as the Great Western Winery; Progressive Dental; ICS, a technology provider; Link Park; the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce; Scorpion Security Products; L2 Studio; and Central National–Gottesman, a global pulp, paper, and forest-products leader, to name just a few. While her client base is currently in Upstate, Holdrege also has customers in North Carolina and Denver.

Holdrege attributes much of her success to the time she spends organizing each branding campaign. “My first goal is to create a ‘design brief’ summarizing what we have learned from the client. It’s our road map outlining the objectives, the goals, and the challenges. It’s a picture of the complete landscape. We share this with the client to be sure we are on the right track. Next we convert the brief into a ‘mood board’ (sometimes called an inspiration board), which is a visual of all that we have learned. The mood board displays, among other things, color, photography, text, layout, and design concepts illustrating the broad direction we plan to follow. The purpose is to be sure, early in the process, that we understand what the client likes, and [thus] avoid having to make multiple revisions.”

Touch points
The company president then returns to her commitment to touch points. “In business jargon, a touch point is any encounter where a customer or potential customer and a business engage to exchange information, provide a service, or handle a transaction,” Holdrege observes. “It’s your brand’s points of customer contact, from start to finish. Identifying all of the touch points is a tedious task. Before a purchase, it can include activities such as social media, ratings and reviews, testimonials, word of mouth, and advertising. During a purchase it can be contact with company sales personnel, promotions, the phone system, a website that’s intuitive, signage, and point-of-sale displays. After the purchase, touch points include billing, marketing emails, the online help center, and service and support personnel.

“There are many ways for customers to experience your brand,” Holdrege continues. “The task can seem daunting. Once you know all of the touch points, you then need to make sure that each one leads to a good customer experience. It’s critical to monitor customer feedback to ensure their satisfaction. Never forget to look at the touch points through the eyes of the customers, not the company, and don’t lose sight of the big picture — the entire customer journey.”

For the past three years, Holdrege has been busy building her staff while growing the business. “I have spent a lot of time developing a creative team of writers, designers, photographers, graphic artists, and web developers,” she stresses. “Now I’m bringing videography in-house. Before hiring anyone, I typically work with them as freelancers to judge their talent and how well they will fit into the office atmosphere. I think the collaboration that goes on in this office is critical to our success, because each team member has to be able to work with the rest of the staff and interface with the clients. The office design is wide open to encourage collaboration and an innovative environment, and I promote creating a fun atmosphere which includes beer Fridays, food sharing, flex time, and Yoga lessons. It’s all about employee empowerment.”

Holdrege says that Idea Kraft is both profitable and debt-free. She identifies herself as a conservative business person, who prefers slow and steady growth. Yet, for the past three years, the company has grown at more than a 100 percent, annual-compounded rate, and her goal in the next two years is, at minimum, to triple the annual revenue. “I have spent a lot of time building a young team and investing in technology as the foundation for the business,” she avers. “My plan now is to bring in an experienced manager, so that I can devote more time to business development. We are also in a position to reach out geographically to service more clients.”

Part of Holdrege’s success is her networking skill. When starting the business, she wasn’t shy about asking agencies such as the Small Business Development Center in Binghamton and area entrepreneurial-assistance programs for help in developing a business plan. She has also networked with her peers as a member and past-president of the Communications Association of the Southern Tier and as a program-committee member of the upstate chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Artists. Holdrege is a judge of the Greater Binghamton Scholastic Challenge, which encourages high-school students to develop business ideas that impact the local community. As the mother of two young boys, she is also the president of the Parent-Teachers Organization in the Town of Windsor.

“I think as an artist I have to reinvent myself every day,” Holdrege concludes. “I am passionate about creating lasting brands for my clients; the inspiration comes from my heart. I keep seeking fresh perspectives, and I want to push the envelope as far as I can … This is a wonderful area to create a business and to enjoy a balance between work and home. I don’t see a limit to what Idea Kraft can become.”

Contact Poltenson at npoltenson@cnybj.com