Established in April 2024, Cottage Factory is dedicated to helping startups, SMEs, and charities achieve sustainable growth and success.
We understand the unique challenges businesses face in today's dynamic environment.
Our team of experienced consultants provides tailored solutions that enable you to:
Enhance your agility: Navigate rapid changes within your sector and adapt quickly to new market conditions.
Increase your proactivity: Anticipate future trends and seize opportunities before your competitors.
Optimise your operations: Streamline your processes, improve efficiency, and maximise your resources.
Strengthen your resilience: Build a robust and adaptable business that can withstand challenges and thrive in the long term.
Projects and Outcomes
Strategic Advisory for Cultural Hangout Festival 2025 – Africa Day Programme
Project Overview
In May 2025, Cottage Factory was appointed Strategic Advisor to the inaugural Cultural Hangout Festival (CHF) — a bold new platform celebrating global heritage through the lens of African creativity, enterprise, and community.
Central to this first edition was the Africa Day programme, a two-day flagship event designed to honour African identity while fostering cross-sectoral dialogue in the arts, business, education, and technology.
Our role was to partner with the CHF team to conceptualise, design, and deliver a programme that would both reflect the richness of African heritage and ignite fresh conversations about the continent’s global influence.
Our Solution
Acting as a core delivery partner, Cottage Factory led the strategic planning, content development, and operational coordination of the Africa Day experience across three distinct spaces: the Main Auditorium, Exhibition Hall, and Children’s Space.
Our contributions included:
Programme Design & Content Curation: We developed the full two-day agenda, integrating live panels, workshops, film screenings, and creative showcases — ensuring a compelling mix of cultural expression, community leadership, and entrepreneurial insight.
Stakeholder Engagement: We recruited and managed a diverse cohort of speakers, artists, cultural ambassadors, volunteers, and delivery partners, facilitating inclusive representation from both grassroots and professional communities.
Project Management & Technical Oversight: From logistics and timelines to programme formatting and venue planning, we provided end-to-end support to ensure smooth and impactful delivery.
Digital Experience: To extend audience reach and support pre-event engagement, we hosted a dedicated CHF 2025 microsite via the Cottage Factory platform, featuring the full schedule, contributor profiles, and registration updates.
Outcome
Through Cottage Factory’s leadership and hands-on support, CHF 2025 is set to debut with a distinctive, inclusive, and future-facing Africa Day programme that captures the imagination of Croydon’s communities and wider audiences.
The result is a robust programme architecture, a thriving network of contributors, and a strategic blueprint that positions the Cultural Hangout Festival as an annual cornerstone of African and diasporic celebration. Cottage Factory’s involvement has laid a strong foundation for CHF’s growth and long-term cultural impact.
Lessons Learned
Curation is Culture-Building: Designing a cohesive programme that speaks to diverse communities requires deep listening, bold storytelling, and a clear narrative arc.
Collaboration Multiplies Impact: Bringing together a cross-section of contributors created a richer, more dynamic festival experience.
Digital Matters: The CHF microsite proved critical in generating early momentum, enabling wider access, and increasing visibility for contributors.
Investing in Infrastructure Pays Off: Early-stage strategic planning helped CHF establish a scalable, repeatable model for future editions.
Case Study: Pakufi – Connecting Global Tech with Top Talent from Emerging Markets
Project Overview
Pakufi is a purpose-driven startup on a mission to bridge the gap between high-potential talent in developing regions and opportunities within the global tech ecosystem. With a bold vision to unlock digital pathways for underserved communities, the team needed strategic clarity to refine their business model, sharpen their value proposition, and define a roadmap for product development.
The Challenge
Despite a strong founding vision, Pakufi faced several early-stage hurdles, including:
Lack of clarity around core value delivery and differentiation.
Uncertainty about which user segments to prioritise.
A need for structured analysis to validate their assumptions and focus their MVP development.
Our Solution
Cottage Factory was brought in as a strategic support partner to help Pakufi move from idea to execution. Our tailored intervention included:
Strategic Workshops: Facilitated deep-dive sessions with the founding team to explore business goals, customer needs, and product-market fit.
Framework-Led Analysis: Guided the team through structured strategic tools, including SWOT, VRIO, and TOWS frameworks, to assess internal capabilities, competitive advantage, and potential market positioning.
Value Proposition Development: Helped articulate a clear and compelling value proposition for both talent and hiring partners.
Target Audience Definition: Refined audience segmentation and prioritisation based on capability alignment, market trends, and scalability potential.
Outcome
As a result of this collaboration, Pakufi emerged with:
A crystal-clear understanding of its core market and the needs of its key users.
A validated and streamlined Minimum Viable Product (MVP) focused on building traction with early adopters.
Renewed strategic confidence to engage stakeholders and move forward with product development and fundraising.
Pakufi is now better positioned to turn ambition into impact—creating a pipeline between emerging tech talent and global opportunities.
Lessons Learned
Structure Empowers Startups: Early-stage ventures benefit greatly from applying proven strategy frameworks to sharpen thinking and eliminate guesswork.
Clarity Before Code: Investing time to clarify audience needs and business fundamentals lays the foundation for building the right product the first time.
Co-Creation Builds Ownership: Collaborative workshops helped the Pakufi team internalise key insights and take ownership of strategic decisions.
Impact Needs Focus: A global mission must be grounded in focused execution—starting with the right MVP for the right audience.
Revitalising Maritime Heritage – Strategic Leadership for The Duke Voyager Shipyard
Project Overview
The Duke Voyager Shipyard (DVS) was a bold regeneration initiative based in Sheerness, Kent, exploring the potential to transform a historic boat shed into a dynamic hub for yacht building, marine innovation, and vocational skills development. Rooted in the area’s rich maritime heritage, the project aimed to stimulate local economic renewal and environmental sustainability through place-based industry revival.
Our Solution
Cottage Factory was engaged to provide strategic leadership and operational planning support, with our founder appointed to act as Chief Operating Officer (COO) during the project’s exploratory phase. Our contributions included:
Business Model Development: Designed a robust Business Model Canvas (BMC) to explore commercial viability, value creation, and delivery mechanisms for the proposed hub.
Stakeholder Engagement: Facilitated high-impact events with residents, industry leaders, and civic stakeholders to test assumptions, gather insight, and co-develop the project vision.
Strategic Guidance: Provided executive-level direction on governance structures, delivery models, partner engagement, and risk mitigation.
Communications: Produced stakeholder newsletters and briefings to ensure transparency and strengthen alignment throughout the feasibility stage.
Outcome
Following an inclusive and rigorous engagement process, it was concluded that the original vision for the Duke Voyager Shipyard was not feasible due to a combination of economic, structural, and logistical constraints.
While the project did not progress to implementation, Cottage Factory’s leadership ensured that the initiative:
Engaged stakeholders meaningfully and surfaced critical insight early in the process.
Tested and validated key assumptions around infrastructure, demand, and capacity.
Built credibility with local partners and demonstrated an accountable, community-first approach to innovation.
Lessons Learned
Feasibility is Success: Not all promising ideas are ready to scale — validating that early on saves significant time, resources, and goodwill.
Stakeholder Alignment is Critical: Open dialogue with community members and delivery partners helped uncover ground-level realities that may not have been visible from a purely top-down perspective.
Every Process Adds Value: Even when a project doesn’t go forward, strategic discovery work can inform future initiatives and sharpen organisational insight.
Integrity Builds Trust: Leading with transparency and realism strengthened relationships, leaving the door open for future collaboration in Sheerness and the wider regeneration space.
Croydon Makers and Creators – Closing the Gaps in Community Engagement
Project Overview
As part of Croydon’s legacy following its year as London Borough of Culture (2023–24), the Culture Croydon initiative commissioned a strategic Gap Analysis to examine the reach, equity, and inclusivity of its cultural engagement efforts. The objective: to understand who was being served, who was missing, and how to co-design a more accessible, community-rooted cultural strategy going forward.
Cottage Factory was engaged to lead this insight-driven engagement review, drawing on our experience in inclusive placemaking, cultural research, and systems thinking.
The Challenge
Despite prior achievements—including successful partnerships with creatives, schools, volunteers, and heritage projects—several persistent gaps were identified:
Geographic disparities: Areas outside of central Croydon showed lower cultural engagement and visibility.
Structural barriers: From funding pressures to compliance issues like IR35, systemic factors were limiting collaboration and creative participation.
Underrepresented communities: Specific demographic groups remained disengaged or disconnected from cultural activity.
Communication blind spots: Preferred engagement channels and formats varied widely across communities, limiting effective outreach.
Our Solution
Cottage Factory delivered a comprehensive engagement and insight study using a two-pronged methodology:
Quantitative and Qualitative Research:
Desk based research on previous reports on art and culture within the boroughfor context.
Questionnaire targeting both members and non-members of the cultural ecosystem to gather feedback, suggestions, and patterns of participation.
An ethnographic study, with our team acting as participant observers in creative spaces and events to understand both motivations of current participants and disengagement factors among non-members.
Barrier Validation and Channel Preferences:
Tested assumptions about structural and cultural barriers through interviews and focus groups.
Identified preferred communication channels and trusted intermediaries within different communities.
Outcome
The Culture Croydon project now benefits from a rich, evidence-informed understanding of its cultural ecosystem—both its strengths and its blind spots. Outcomes included:
A clearly articulated engagement framework to support inclusive programming and partnership-building across the borough.
Renewed focus on hyperlocal engagement, supported by data and community mapping.
Insights that will guide long-term investment, resource distribution, and cultural equity efforts.
A stronger foundation for trust-based relationships between institutions and grassroots actors.
Lessons Learned
Data Must Be Grounded in Human Experience: Ethnographic methods added vital nuance to survey data, capturing motivations and barriers often missed by numbers alone.
Disengagement is Often Structural, Not Personal: Lack of participation isn’t apathy—it’s often exclusion, fatigue, or misalignment with lived realities.
Communication Isn't One-Size-Fits-All: Different communities trust and respond to different channels—understanding this is crucial for effective engagement.
Culture Happens Everywhere: Investing in overlooked spaces and local networks unlocks potential that centralised approaches often miss.