Red Hound's Virtual Team

Kella Knack is the founder and president of Red Hound Consulting. She has more than 27 years marketing experience for a wide range of companies from small start-ups to multi-million dollar corporations. Over the years, Knack has gained wide-spread recognition for her ability to assist her clients in developing their long-term strategic positioning goals; develop their marketing messaging and implement highly successful corporate marketing programs.

Prior to founding Red Hound, Knack was the founder and president of KJ Communications, an independent public relations and strategic marketing consulting firm with offices in San Carlos and Los Altos, California. She served as a strategic advisor for a number of highly successful marketing issues and campaigns for clients that ranged from start-ups to multimillion dollar high-tech companies in the EDA, networking, semiconductor, embedded systems design and database management sectors. Once the marketing programs were defined, she focused her efforts for these clients by coordinating their press activities; preparing press releases and helping with the development of other marketing materials.

Recently, Knack oversaw the development and implementation of the content and design for John Benward Company, Inc. (www.benwardco.com) A general engineering contractor firm based in Sonoma, California, that provides all forms of site preparation for construction projects in the San Francisco North Bay Area. For Benward, Knack worked with the company principals to develop all of the content for the website; select the graphic elements used on the website and coordinate the overall "look and feel" of the website as well as oversaw its final implementation.

Another recent project includes development of the content, design, selection of graphical elements and final implementation of the website for Bonino Estate Vineyards (boninoestatevineyards.com).

Projects

Another Red Hound project includes establishing, implementing and maintaining all of the marketing procedures for Speeding Edge, a leading industry training and consulting firm specializing in the high-speed PCB and system design disciplines.

For Speeding Edge, Knack oversaw the redesign of the company's website as well all of the graphic elements for the company; prepared all of the documentation for and implemented the establishment of Speeding Edge as a publishing company; developed all of the company's marketing materials; and managed the company's tradeshow activities. On an on-going, consulting basis, Knack serves as consulting Vice President of Marketing for Speeding Edge. Knack handles all of the Speeding Edge press activities which includes the writing and distribution of press releases and coordination with appropriate trade-press editors and market analysts. She also established the company's quarterly, subscriber-based newsletter, Current Source and continues to serve as the editor of that publication. In edition, Knack served as editor for the company's technical publication, Right the First Time, A Practical Handbook for High Speed PCB and System Design, Volumes 1 and 2.

About the Founder

Prior to her involvement with Red Hound and KJ Communications, Knack held a number of positions as an editor for high tech trade publications including ASIC&EDA; LAN Computing; Communications Systems Week and Printed Circuit Design. Earlier, she served as a CDM Engineer for Martin Marietta where she was responsible for preparing Class I Engineering Change Proposals for military and aerospace projects. She began her career as a marketing and technical writer for Morrison-Knudsen company, a worldwide engineering and construction firm.

Knack holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Chapman College.

Website Services

Nora Nelson founded Nora's Websites in 2003 to help small businesses with tasks that owners don't have the time for such as designing and maintaining their websites, e-commerce, help with sales tracking, databases and more. As with all of Red Hound's services, these tasks are handled with a personal touch.

For Speeding Edge, Nelson redesigned the company's website using the content from Speeding Edge and the art from the graphic artist. Through strategic consultation, Nelson provided a new look and feel for the website that flowed easily. When Speeding Edge products were ready for market, Nelson set up a secure e-commerce shopping cart that accepted credit cards so that the company could easily handle product fulfillment via the Internet. In addition, Nelson settles all the e-commerce transactions, prepares lists of customers and products for shipping and keeps a database of sales and customers for Speeding Edge.

Graphics Services

Dan Marz is an experienced graphic designer who works closely with clients to understand their companies, businesses and market sectors and then provides creative graphics that visually capture the essence of all those factors. He has worked with Kella Knack for the past 5 years developing graphics for various clients. From logo development to consistent, cohesive development of marketing collateral, Dan has helped many startups hit the ground running with graphics support. He understands printing processes from offset to textile printing and prepares graphics files with great care and attention to detail.

Strategic Partnership

In addition to its team of marketing experts, Red Hound maintains a strategic relationship with Impress Northwestern printing in Santa Rosa, California, a full-service, high-quality commercial printer that has been serving the Bay Area for more than 40 years. Through this relationship, Red Hound can provide its clients with access to quality, cost-effective printing options for all their business needs. Impress Northwestern serves as a single-source print production facility that provides creative and pre-press services; an extensive line of one- to full-color sheet-fed offset print products; complete distribution, fulfillment and inventory management programs and client-controlled reporting and automated procurement systems.