Vesdor opens doors for the rest of us.
Vesdor is an online real estate platform which allows investment opportunities to non-accredited investors.
Challenge
This real estate company had a problem—they were doing too much business. For 15 years they had been doing deals in one of the hottest markets in the country and wanted to expand exponentially. They needed to go digital, but a snappy website and a marketing campaign wasn’t going to do it.
When the Feds give you an opportunity like this you should take advantage.
In 2012, the JOBS act (Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act) was passed, relaxing many of the country’s securities regulations. Before this, real estate investing was only open to accredited individuals and groups. Now with fewer restrictions, non-accredited individuals could invest.
Our client challenged us to optimize their conventional processes, expand their geographic reach and find a way to broaden the investor pool.
Solution
We leveraged the “crowdfunding” process and technology to take advantage of the loosened criteria around non-accredited investing. Kickstarter and GoFundMe have set precedents for success in crowdfunding so we simply applied it to real estate. By exposing the properties through a well-advertised web portal we were able to increase inventory exponentially. We decided to set ourselves apart from other competitors by offering a lower minimum investment and target non-accredited investors.
Creating the name was quite a challenge. Our partner-client wanted a single name, one that sounded familiar and connotes investment. And it had to be a .com. Vesdor phonetically represents the word investor while warming it up a little (like “welcome through our door”). The brand reflects a simple, sophisticated consumer-driven product. Intuitiveness was paramount so the message is deliberate and straightforward and the back-end management hierarchy was reduced to only the necessary steps.
We also kept in mind SEC regulations and worked to cover our client’s legal interests.
Then we built a slick, modern website that acted more like an app. Completely responsive and mobile-friendly, the ad campaign encourages the ability to “invest in real estate from anywhere.”