Case Study
illume Silks is an e-commerce, boutique textile company that provides handcrafted ribbons, table runners, styling cloths and more. Primarily serving professionals in the wedding industry — floral designers, photographers, and calligraphers to name a few. All of the products created are hand-dyed, -trimmed, and -spooled, resulting in beautiful one-of-a-kind products.
With the increasing demand for these items came an increase in challenges for the business including a rise in competition. With the market now seeing new businesses stepping into the space it was now crucial for illume to establish themselves as a leader in the industry.
Creative Challenge
Establish clear brand attributes to drive the brand voice and creative direction. Use the new guidelines to create an evergreen campaign and redesign the website. Additionally, use market research to restructure the framework of the site and implement new UX/UI to improve the customer and brand experience.
Rebrand
What we discovered in our research is that the majority of the competition was solely focused on the product they were selling and less on the value they provided their customer. This discovery led us to explore and implement new initiatives — a new campaign that delivers brand awareness in all channels that illume participates (web, social and affiliates) and a rewards/loyalty program that helps capture new customers and retain existing.
As the market continues to grow and customers are split amongst the many shops to purchase from a clear campaign that establishes the brand and a rewards program would be the the deciding factors to persuade customers to continue purchasing from illume.
Part of the rebrand was to redesign the illume silks logo. The previous logo was lacking a personal and handcrafted touch. When approaching the new design we knew we wanted to go with a hand drawn or handwritten mark that could act as the foundation for all other brand assets and elements. The new logo was outsourced to calligrapher and illustrator, Lisa Woodard of Custom Crafted.
The campaign that kicked off the rebrand is Wrapped in Love. A simple message that delivers the warmth and grace of the illume Silks brand. Each product is created with love and adorns sentimental items such as wedding bouquets, rings, invitations, and tablescapes. The message of love is pure to the product and to the customer who sees the value of gracing their creations or heirlooms with the luxury of an illume Silks product.
New photography was also introduced to better represent the quality of the products. Loosely placing the fabric into a natural, minimalistic environment and allowing the product to showcase it’s fine details and textures. The use of a single source window light gives depth to the image and paints beautiful highlights and shadows.
Web Design
The website is now undergoing a full redevelopment and addressing several issues that will result in an exceptional customer experience, elevate the brand, and pave the way for what is expected in this industry.
Each customer shops differently and has their own habits of how they would like to find the right product so we rebuilt the architecture of the site and have set up the framework to be flexible, allowing the user to easily find exactly what they want. Whether they shop by category, color, season, or curated experience, the site will accommodate different shopping and purchasing habits.
Results
illume Silks now has a clear vision and strategy for how to grow and develop the brand, a new website in development that will provide a first-in-class experience, a campaign that will drive brand awareness and a rewards program that gives back to the customer for staying loyal. illume Silks is on track to become a leader and the Go-to in the growing wedding market.
Stylescape for illume Silks Rebrand
