The Gleam Co. is a Maryland-based powerhouse creative team specializing in the unique world of pageant photography. Audrey (photographer) has been a colleague of Threefold for a little over a year, but we recently had the opportunity to service The Gleam Co. professionally by creating a website for their new, glamorous brand.

Meet Audrey & Kaila, the unstoppable glam team behind The Gleam Co. in Hagerstown, Maryland.

Audrey (L) & Kaila (R)

Audrey and Kaila initially became the dynamic glam duo through Audrey’s boudoir photography business, Audrey Rouzer Portraits. After some time, Audrey opened a second photography studio, Aloft Studio, and the team began creating fine art portraiture in the space. Eventually, they landed a pageant contestant in one of these fine art sessions, and had the opportunity to photograph all of the glitz and glam that came along with pageantry.

One client turned into more and more… until they officially opened “The Gleam Co” in August of 2024. Now, The Gleam Co. provides pageant contestants with a guided and personalized photoshoot experience that celebrates their hard work, service, and dedication. They pride themselves on their connectivity with their clients and dedication to their craft, which shines through with every conversation with them. These women clearly care deeply for each client and their journey, always knowing their unique pageant circuit, goals, and talents.

Kaila & Audrey speak so lovingly about their clients, often emphasizing their admiration for the hard work and their deep desire to create an experience for them that is worthy of their individual walks.

We always say that you see true success in your business whenever you care more for your clients success than your own success, and that absolutely shines through in the rapid growth of The Gleam Co, and the raving feedback from their clients. This team has truly made a career on making women feel empowered, beautiful, and confident. Nobody does it like this duo.

A few months ago, Audrey was agonizing over the prospect of building a website from scratch after a few poor experiences doing it herself and hiring outside contractors. At this time, we had worked closely together on several occasions which had allowed her to see first-hand our work and quality. We were kicking around offering basic website builds, so we offered to take on the job.

When building The Gleam Co’s new site, we took the brand through our Branding Storyboard process, designed to help us gain the most effective picture possible on their ideal client and how to streamline their messaging. Marketing is not black and white. Each business has unique goals, values, and clients – there is no “one size fits all” solution. The Branding Storyboard helps not only our clients reconnect with the very core of their brand, but it also helps us climb into the brand ourselves and sit in the drivers seat long enough to provide our clients with the most effective marketing tools regardless of the medium.

Our Branding Storyboard for The Gleam Co. led us here. To these beautiful young women who, regardless of their time on the stage, were not entirely feeling seen within their photoshoot experiences. More than that, there was a vast misconception of the world of pageantry. These women work so hard, and very rarely have a full photoshoot experience (beyond headshots) to document it.

Kaila & Audrey created that. They filled that need. And they loaded it with connectivity, something that most women crave, to help these women not only feel seen within their images, but also heard and considered within their journey.

Having been around through the build of The Gleam Co., I had a unique inside look at the heart and soul that Audrey & Kaila have for their business; so writing in their brand voice was simple. Because of that, I also knew that they might be unsure about some of the decisions that I made when building their site to make sure that we were creating the sharpest possible brand message to cut through the fluff while also curating an emotional connection. Needless to say, they received a plethora of voice messages with in-depth explanations of all of the marketing concepts behind it. Here are just a few:

When structuring Kaila & Audrey’s site, we dedicated their entire first page to offering solutions to their clients most common concerns and objections. Over and over again, we assured them that The Gleam Co. team SAW them and their concerns. SAW them and their hard work.

We didn’t introduce Kaila & Audrey right off the bat, but we mentioned them often within the scope of talking about the client, generating interest in them as “key” players at The Gleam Co., and the secret ingredient to this unbeatable experience that they won’t find elsewhere.

When we introduce Kaila & Audrey, we talk about the stuff that matters. Their values and how that affects their work, their skillset and how it makes them the best for the job, and their personal connection to their work that emphasizes empathy and trust. It might be fun for clients to know that Kaila has kids and Audrey has bunnies and both grew up as athletes – etc… but the most essential pieces of their “about” were pieces that spoke to them as people and curates trust with their clients.

Throughout their site, we provided tangible “next steps” to take concerns and objections out of the process, and utilized before & after images on every page to prove the immense skill of the team over and over again. Above all, clients crave the transformation story. They need to see that it worked before, and that it’s possible to work for them too!

There is an abundance more to this site, and if you’d like to see it yourself, we encourage you to head over to The Gleam Co. and learn more about this absolute powerhouse of a team.

Additionally, you can catch my interview with Audrey on our podcast Not Easily Broken! We discuss the journey of The Gleam Co., as well as different brand choices we made and why.

If you are looking for a team to help you evaluate your brand, create a visual branding tools, or build you a powerful website, we’d love to chat with you.

You can learn more about The Gleam Co at https://thegleamcomd.com and on Instagram @the.gleamco ✨