ABOUT SMUDGED
A wider view of business.
A clear focus on growth.
Smudged is a commercial growth and transformation partner for ambitious B2B businesses. We connect strategy, people and commercial capability, helping businesses choose their next move, build what it needs and make it happen.
The right team.
Built around the work.
Commercial challenges rarely fit neatly into one specialism. Entering a new market might need research, positioning, pricing, sales expertise and changes to how the business delivers. The work needs people who can see the connections as well as specialists who know their part.
Smudged combines senior commercial experience with specialist expertise to help businesses make informed decisions, strengthen commercial performance and build the capabilities needed for their next stage of growth.
We establish what the business needs to achieve and what is really getting in the way, then shape the team around it. We work with the expertise already in your business and bring in the people needed to complement it. Smudged leads the engagement, connecting the contributions around an agreed commercial objective.
Founded and led by Caroline Smith, Smudged draws on a trusted collective of specialists. Based in Wales, we work with ambitious businesses across the UK.
Make sure you’re solving for the right thing.
The problem a business is trying to fix isn’t always the one holding it back. A sales challenge may involve the proposition, the market being pursued or the way the business operates. Choosing what to change needs a view across those connections.
Smudged was built from experience inside businesses: building commercial functions, entering new markets, repositioning brands and leading transformation and organisational change. That experience revealed a recurring need for support that could see the bigger picture, challenge the thinking and work alongside a team to make things happen.
That is why Smudged exists. We work in the messy middle of growth, making sense of the opportunity, establishing what needs to change and bringing the right people and expertise together to deliver it.
Consultancy judgement.
Fractional leadership.
Specialist delivery.
Combined with the practical perspective of people who have worked inside businesses, accountable for commercial decisions, teams and results.
The perspective to shape the work
We bring consultancy thinking to the commercial question: examining evidence, challenging assumptions and establishing the direction before deciding what needs to be built or changed.
The leadership to move it forward
We can work alongside your team in a fractional or embedded capacity, taking responsibility for agreed priorities and connecting decisions with day-to-day delivery.
The expertise to get it done
We bring the specialist delivery capability you might look for in an agency, shaped around the work. The people and disciplines involved follow the commercial objective and the capability already in your business.
The understanding of life inside a business
We understand that plans have to work within real budgets, competing priorities, established relationships and the capacity of your people. That informs both what we recommend and how we put it into practice.
Outside-in thinking.
Connected to the realities of your business.
Commercial decisions are stronger when they start with the world your customers operate in: what they need, what they value, how they buy and what alternatives they have. We bring that outside-in perspective to the choices your business is making.
We connect customer, market and competitor understanding with the knowledge already inside your business. That helps test assumptions, reveal opportunities and establish whether the way you position, price, sell and deliver reflects what the market will value.
The work then comes back inside: what does that understanding mean for your strategy, people, processes and capability? We help translate it into decisions and practical changes, so the market perspective shapes how the business moves forward.
A market perspective.
A whole-business view.
Responsibility for delivery.
Bring the market into the room
We connect customer, buyer and competitor understanding with your team’s experience. Decisions about the offer, pricing and growth are tested against what the market values and how customers actually buy.
Follow the implications across the business
A new proposition can affect sales, pricing, delivery and capability. We bring those implications into the work together, so decisions made in one area support what needs to happen elsewhere.
One connected engagement
We shape the team around the work and bring specialists in where their expertise is needed. Smudged leads the engagement, connects their contributions and keeps responsibility for the agreed scope clear.
Lead the work alongside your people
We turn the direction into priorities, ownership and practical delivery. Your team contributes throughout, with knowledge, tools and responsibility transferred as the work develops so the business can carry it forward.
Built on the realities of commercial leadership.
Smudged brings together experience across business strategy, customer and market understanding, commercialisation, positioning, marketing, sales and organisational change.
That experience includes the practical demands of choosing markets, shaping offers, winning customers and bringing people with a change in direction. It informs both the advice we give and how we lead the work.
The expertise required varies with the engagement. We bring the relevant people together and make their contribution part of one coordinated commercial effort.
Worthwhile businesses.
Greater possibilities.
We are interested in what commercial success makes possible: valuable innovations reaching customers, specialist businesses finding new markets and organisations building the capability to achieve more.
We are particularly drawn to businesses improving people, planet and place. For those ambitions to go further, the offer needs to work for customers and the business needs to be commercially sustainable.
Helping connect that ambition with commercial reality is work we care about.