Client relationships / Business development

Studio Kimchi is a boutique creative studio. We make animated films for NGOs and socially conscious brands. Our films have reached many millions, premiered on ITV, and screened at Annecy, Locarno, SXSW and Tribeca.

We're a small team, and we intend to stay that way, we work with only a few clients at once. Every film we make is something we're genuinely proud of. We work a four-day week, and we believe focus, creativity, and sustainable work practices are key to how good work gets made.

We're looking for someone who understands that the right relationship, built slowly and honestly, is worth more than a hundred cold outreaches. This is a Client Relationships role as much as a Business Development role. You'll be responsible for nurturing past, present and future clients. You'll work directly with the founder and the team. There are no layers between you and the work or the people making it.

What You'll Do

• Stay in touch with existing and past clients, share relevant work, notice when their world has changed in a way that creates a new need

• Manage a carefully tended pipeline of warm leads, people who've shown interest and need the right moment, not more pressure

• Re-engage dormant leads with substance, a new case study, a relevant question, something that earns their attention rather than demand it

• Lead first calls and discovery conversations

• Help leads articulate the story they want to tell, often before they know it themselves

• Discuss budgets openly and honestly, and help organisations think through funding routes

• Develop proposals in close collaboration with the creative team

• Identify organisations whose missions align with what we do and whose challenges we can genuinely solve

• Know when to say no to an opportunity that isn't the right fit

• Feed insights from conversations back into how we position ourselves and who we reach out to next

• Keep the CRM accurate and the pipeline honest

What We're Looking For

You'll need

• Fluent, professional English

• Previous experience in business development or sales, either in creative services (agency, production, design, branding, or similar) or working with NGOs, foundations, or purpose-driven brands

• The ability to understand what someone actually needs, not just what they say they want

• Comfort discussing budgets, timelines, and creative scope without hedging

• Strong written communication that feels like they were written by a human who paid attention

• Self-direction and accountability. You’ll manage your own pipeline and your own rhythm

It would help if you

• Have existing relationships in the third sector or in the advertising world

• Understand how animation is made and roughly what it costs

• Have worked in long sales processes and know what patient relationship-building actually looks like

What Success Looks Like

• You know our current leads well, what they care about, what's blocking them, and what would make them ready

• You convert one to two strong projects per trimester

• You can run a first call and a follow-up without chasing

• Organisations trust you as someone who genuinely cares

This role is not about volume, it’s about depth. You won't be measured on how many people you email each week, but on whether the relationships in your care are alive, warm, and moving in the right direction.

You'll sell work you can be proud of. Films that matter to the organisations that commission them and to the audiences who watch them. And you'll help shape how the studio grows into the next chapter of its story.

This role requires genuine patience, real curiosity about other people's work, and comfort with long sales cycles. If that sounds like the kind of work you find meaningful, we'd like to hear from you.

We will wait for the right person to come along. If you recognise yourself in some but not all of this, you’re likely not a good fit. But if this genuinely sounds like the role you've been looking for, we'd love to hear from you.