When Alex Corkhill, Head of Content at Spinwise contacted us, he had seen this story play out before. Company scales fast and enters new markets. Localization? It remains an afterthought. Quality suffers, customers notice, and international market entry goes OK but leaves something to be desired. One big “what if”.
So, when he joined Spinwise, a fast-growing iGaming provider, Alex was determined to do things differently. Previously in charge of localization at Bolt, Alex had seen first-hand the powerful impact of proper localization. He wanted to not only build and scale a localization programme – he wanted it to be a competitive edge, and a driver for international growth.
Upon joining, Alex immediately ran some competitor research in-house that highlighted some big opportunities in the industry.
Others were cutting corners with localization – and Alex knew this could be their differentiator.
“A lot of the iGaming brands that were successful in our industry weren’t putting proper effort in localization or investing in it strategically, and so there was a real opportunity to build a USP around that – it was almost like a gap in the market.”
When working at Bolt, Alex had tried every play in the book. Getting in-house native speakers, who weren’t linguists, to translate and add flag emojis when they finished. Full-time teams that created two parallel tiers of language that never really worked – and had to be supplemented with freelancers as their workload grew. Even exploring an AI-first approach during the 2023 boom–only to quickly realise AI was not up to standard.
“Insourcing is the first solution that comes to mind due to the perceived cost-saving. But actually, you’re getting people to put on hold the job they are paid to do – which is a massive hidden cost. And it never works long-term.”
Each solution works… until it doesn’t. Scale up and things fall apart at the seams.
“At Bolt, we had a huge content engine. Something like 300,000 strings per product. When you multiply that by 40+ languages to translate into, it becomes a whole new level of localization. At some point, you can’t retro-fix anymore and you need to build an integrated framework.”
At Spinwise, Alex wasted no time building the framework. He knew localization was not about simply taking words from one language and putting them into another.
And this calls for proper documentation – brand guidelines, Tone of Voice, existing process.
Helpfully, Spinwise already had these foundations. Between Alex’s prior experience and the already great set-up at Spinwise, things clicked together quickly. He knew what to do – he just needed the right partner.
“You need to localize the meaning, maybe change the sentence structure but preserve the meaning. It’s about maintaining your brand voice and knowing you can bend it to fit the market, region or locale you’re targeting. It makes all the difference.”
To lead Spinwise’s rapid international expansion, Alex needed the right partner – a company with a strong grasp on iGaming that could move fast and help them build a USP around localization.
Music to our ears. Where localization is mostly treated as an add-on, working with Spinwise was different. They had researched localization – and knew that doing it properly could boost their conversions by 20-40%.
It wasn’t just about getting things right operationally – it was about seizing a market opportunity others were leaving on the table.
However, Alex had some barriers. Localization requires a lot of trust – so he wanted to make sure the quality was spot-on before committing fully.
We started with our trial package – a robust test project that involved translations into 3 different languages. Our teams proactively built 3 different variations of Tone of Voice in each language, which meant onboarding 18 people to test 3 languages.
We put the translations into Figma designs, making sure the copy fit perfectly – and sent it all for the client and their internal auditors to review. Having the visuals meant they could easily decide the style and copy that worked best – and built huge credibility in the relationship right from the get-go. It’s how we do things at Native – we go all in, as we know how trust-heavy localization is.
But industry expertise was just the foundation. What truly impressed Alex was how Native operated. Open and responsive communication. The same or next-day turnaround. We integrated directly into Spinwise’s Slack, set up JIRA workflows, and worked like an in-house team.
“It’s all about trust,” Alex said. And trust comes from consistent delivery.
When Spinwise ran internal audits with industry experts as part of their QA process, the feedback on quality was excellent.
“Native had cracked the code on the impossible triangle: balancing speed, quality, and price. Where other vendors forced you to pick two, Native delivered all three without compromise.”
In a competitive space like iGaming where features often blur, localizing properly was like a gold mine – a clear and untapped differentiator that lifted Spinwise head and shoulders above the rest.
The partnership delivered Alex’s “dream workflow.” After the initial test phase, we went on to scale Spinwise’s operations into 8 languages and turned localization from a bottleneck to an enabler of rapid market expansion.
This boosted Spinwise’s credibility with customers, removed barriers, and helped them fill a market gap with properly localized assets.
“We run regular audits internally, and the quality rating that comes back for your work is consistently super high, like 9 out of 10 at the worst. So it has made absolute sense to more deeply integrate with you – it helps everybody.”
– Alexander corkhill, Head of Content @ Spinwise
When you’re competing in dense markets and the currency is the user’s attention, you win by speaking their language.
iGaming benefits massively from removing friction from users that are ready to convert.
Spinwise has seized the opportunity to capitalize on being personal with their customers. Now it’s your turn.
© Native 2024