Hutch is a new D2C player in the sofa market. A customisable, comfortable and stylish sofa in a box, designed by industry experts with decades of furniture manufacturing and product experience, all hand made in the UK. The combination of product quality, innovation and aesthetic is the drive behind launching the brand, bringing consumers an alternative to the market place, that is individual as they are.
When we were asked to conceptualise and deliver a direct to consumer sofa brand from the ground up, we immediately jumped at the chance. Our research showed the market was fiercely competitive and crowded, so our challenges were clear. We set about defining the product creative while also building a digital architecture that enabled user customisation. We constructed a brand that was born from the unique product differences when compared to others in the category; individual customisation, comfort and style. This built the foundation for creative direction, touching upon all aspects of the digital experience, delivering a memorable, bold and category defining brand.
Our full creative service means we look at every touchpoint on the brand journey, from manufacturer warehouse to customers home. Memorability has been a large part of this brand brief and there is no better place to capture attention when being delivered. We designed a memorable and stand-out range of product packaging that was fully recyclable. Using a single ink on craft card, only covering 30% of the printable area, we helped push forward the sustainable initiatives Hutch is embarking on.
We also looked at how we could bridge the gap between the digital and physical divide when going D2C. To do this, the brand experience was extended to a Free Swatch service. Now customers could get their hands on the fabric samples used in the Hutch sofa ranges. We designed a letter-box sized package that gave customers a bold and premium first impression fitting of the brand, with all the information they needed to help convert the customer to purchasing a Hutch Sofa.
The brand strategy is not only the back bone for creative, but it also informed how and why we chose to use Shopify Plus for our design and development. All Hutch sofas are totally customisable with over 366 different possible combinations. Yep - that many!
We wanted to harness and deliver this unique selling point for the user while also keeping one eye on future product releases. We were required to integrate manufacturer product data feeds.
To do this we suggested Shopify Plus as the required platform to enable specific Theme, Checkout & Private App development, delivering hutch a site with unique, scalable experiences. With real time data informing stock holding position or pre-order status, every product combination was visualised instantly along with all relevant information according to the customers choices.
“Beyond being an adaptable and flexible team, it is their ability to build a stand out creative direction for the brand - something that is really important in this crowded and noisy market place. They just get what is needed to be done and you can leave Ben & the team to do it. It’s great having that trust in place.
Communication has also been impressive during this process. We asked for a very specific technical requirement to make sure we had total synchronisation between Shopify and our finance infrastructure - Ben and his team overcame the challenges keeping us informed all the way. ”
As part of our direct to consumer services, we worked closely with the Hutch founding team to guide and navigate them through paid social media creative strategy and tactics. Launching a brand to market required thumb stopping content that resonated with viewers across the funnel strategy. We produce a rich bank of video and static content with creative copy to correctly position the brand to consumers.
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