We publish three ways to work with us, and the one that needs explaining is the retainer. Nine thousand pounds a month, two days a week of the studio, no minimum term beyond a month’s notice. People understand what a project buys. What a retainer buys is less obvious, so here is what it is and what it is not.
It is a standing slot in our week
Two days a week means two days that are yours whether you use them well or not. They sit in the calendar in the same place every week, usually Tuesday and Wednesday, and they do not move because someone else has an emergency.
That predictability is most of the value. Work arrives on Thursday and is looked at on Tuesday, not in three weeks when a project finishes. For a company shipping continuously, three weeks is a long time to hold a question.
It is a named pair, not the studio’s spare capacity
You get two specific people, usually a designer and an engineer, and they stay for as long as the retainer runs. Nobody is swapped in because they were free that week.
This is the part that quietly saves the most money. A pair that has been inside your product for four months needs no briefing, does not rebuild the same component twice, and knows which parts of your codebase are load-bearing. We have watched the same work take a fortnight in month one and two days in month six.
It runs in two-week blocks
Every fortnight starts with a half-hour call and ends with something shipped. You bring the list, we say what fits in two days a week for two weeks, and anything that does not fit waits for the next block or displaces something.
We do not carry hours forward. An unused day is gone, which sounds harsh and is the only way to stop a retainer turning into a bank of credit that everyone feels vaguely guilty about.
It includes saying no
The most useful thing a retained studio does is tell you when the thing you asked for is the wrong thing. That is easier for us than for your own team, because we are not in your performance review, and it is the job you are paying for as much as the making.
Expect at least one conversation a quarter where we argue against a piece of work. If we never do that, you are paying agency rates for a pair of hands.
What it is not
It is not unlimited access. Two days a week is two days, and the honest answer to “can you just” is sometimes no.
It is not a support contract. If something breaks at midnight your team fixes it; we are not on call, and with nine people we never will be.
It is not cheaper than a project for one well-defined piece of work. If you know exactly what you want built, a project is better value and we will say so.
Who it suits
Companies shipping continuously who need design and front-end capacity they do not want to hire for yet, and who have someone internally who can make decisions between our Tuesdays. That last part matters more than the budget. A retainer with no decision-maker on the client side becomes two days a week of waiting, politely, for an answer.
If that sounds like your year, send us a note about what you are shipping. We are booked about six weeks out, and we will say so straight away if the dates do not work.
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