From first logo to national retail

A UK business with a strong product: a range of work gloves for the trades and for people who take their DIY seriously. When we started it had almost no presence online and no established brand. It wanted to become a brand people could find, trust and buy, and then to grow beyond selling one pair at a time.

Brand, marketing and sales are usually three suppliers and three briefs. This business needed all three to pull in the same direction, and its needs changed as it grew. The identity that works on a product page also has to work on a packet on a shelf. The content that brings in the first customers has to be measurable, so that the next decisions are better ones. And at some point, selling to individuals stops being enough on its own.

We began with the brand: logo, visual identity and packaging designed as a family, so the gloves would be recognisable online and on a counter. Then the website, built to sell directly and to explain the products, and a library of photography and video that fed the site, social media and advertising.

Making the brand findable came next. Search engine optimisation, content and advertising brought customers to the website, and analytics gave the business a way to measure its marketing and improve it.

The bigger shift was commercial. Rather than relying on consumer advertising, we looked at who used the gloves most heavily and in what conditions, and tailored the proposition and the messaging to particular industries. That turned a general product into something specific trades would ask for.

To sell it, the business needed people. We helped set up a new business function, worked alongside the new account executives on prospecting and ran opportunities through the full sales cycle, from the first approach to the account. One of those approaches was to a major national home improvement retailer, which agreed to a trial placement.

The business reports that it went from almost no search visibility to first place on Google for its target searches, and that sales rose by 87% after the move into industry targeting. The retail trial went well and developed into an ongoing relationship with the retailer. The company has since grown into a multichannel business, selling direct, through the trade and through national retail, with the brand, website and commercial groundwork from this engagement underneath it.

Our part was the brand, the digital presence, the industry targeting, the sales function and the first retail trial, with support continuing as the business grew.