Bringing an established brand to life online

How can an already thriving and beloved retail brand with plenty of customers, brand recognition, and a lot of local love leverage its online presence to further its reach and evolve its identity?

BRANDING I RESEARCH I WEBSITE DESIGN I E-COMMERCE I B2C

BACKGROUND
Founded in 2003 by a husband and wife, Artists & Fleas began as a community marketplace for makers, crafters and dealers to come together to sell without having to bear the cost of a pricey retail rental. The market started as a weekends-only destination in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a business model that was simple and novel for the time—vendors apply to rent space to sell their wares alongside other merchants in a funky, branded warehouse featuring music, food and good vibes. After years of organic growth, extended pop-ups and increased shopper, vendor and press recognition, the business opened a full-time outpost in Chelsea Market, followed by monthly outdoor markets in LA’s downtown Arts District and Venice Beach, and another permanent location in Soho. All throughout, the brand maintained a functional online presence, but the owners weren’t sure how they should evolve in the digital space.

MY ROLE
I joined the existing A&F team as a long-term consultant and quickly embedded myself in their offices among the two founders, market managers, admin staff and other come and go consultants. I was tasked with figuring out how to best evolve their online presence to support their offline brand, so I began with a formal and traditional discovery process since none had ever been undertaken before.

CHALLENGE
A&F spent years building it brand organically, leveraging email, a basic website, and growing social media channels to support its offline endeavors. Meanwhile, others in the craft and thrift market space had thriving online presences and e-commerce sites, and while it was clear that A&F needed to be playing deeper in the digital space in order to attract even more shoppers and variety of sellers, it didn’t seem like the right thing to just replicate competitors. We needed to figure out where the opportunities were for the brand and XXX.

APPROACH
So before doing anything, I needed to figure out how to best support a company that already has plenty of shoppers and sellers, a strong brand personality, a heart and a soul. To do this, I wanted to understand its customers and vendors, take a look at competitors, and XXXX a digital strategy.

DISCOVERY
Since the brand was already going strong we had plenty of shoppers and vendors to mine for their impressions, shopping habits, and projected use of an A&F e-commerce site. So I interviewed and surveyed vendors, spoke to shoppers at the different market locations, and analyzed relevant and competitive shopping experiences online to establish benchmarks and uncover trends.

SHOPPERS
I intercepted shoppers as they were exiting the markets to ask a few questions about their experience—X, Y, Z. Lorem ipsum dolar sit amit lorem ipsum dolar sit amit lorem ipsum.

VENDORS

PERSONA BEHAVIOR MAPPING
I spent time observing shoppers and how they browsed, what they inquired about, and what they bought. They were also candid about their habits when I asked directly, and after analyzing all of the qualitative data I’d collected, three types of shoppers began to emerge, each with a slightly different needs and goals. In tandem, I took a moment to think about how much all of them valued the tactile and communal experience of visiting Artists & Fleas, so I began to wonder how online shopping could supplement the in-person experience for each.

For instance, tourists are frequently interested in smaller items as souvenirs, or things branded with NYC or Brooklyn.

USER JOURNEYS

The more I mapped the articulated and observed shopper behaviors, the more it became clear that there were three personas it made sense to consider, each with their own journeys and an accompanying A&F opportunity.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS + BRAND REVIEW
In tandem, I conducted a review of relevant brand ecosystems, websites and social channels to see how each were playing in the digital space. I also surveyed all A&F channels to visualize what it currently looks like to XXX.

CREATIVE TEAM BRAINSTORM

The team gathered to review the Discovery deck, then broke out into smaller groups to complete the assignment—which was to further flesh out the shopper personas with thoughts and feelings, influences and behaviors. At the end of the session, we got back together to present , synthesize and identify next steps.

INSIGHTS
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NEW HOMEPAGE

In future iterations of the home page, I added an optional video module and a social feed page bottom.

I set up a clearly labeled, ever present global nav and created a modular page that allowed for a flexible promo banner and a photo gallery.

ROUND 1 DELIVERABLES: New Website

Qualitative data aside, I knew the website needed an overhaul, specifically a framework with improved navigation, a modular structure, clear taxonomy, concise copy and visually-driven content.

Global nav is too far down the page, disappears on lower level pages, is poorly ordered and labeled, and oddly bundled with event promo.

OLD HOMEPAGE

ROUND 2 DELIVERABLES: Holiday Online Pop-Up Shop

To beta test an online marketplace prior to launching a full scale e-commerce website, we decided to try an online pop-up shop. To save on XXX, we planned to XXX it completely in-house, from product photography to product copy to fulfillment to shipping and returns.

Objectives

To initiate momentum around the A&F online sales channel
To assess vendor curation, cooperation and bandwidth
To test the market during a key shopping season
To uncover challenges before embarking on full-scale e-comm site
To help shape and refine the digital strategy for the coming year

Learnings

Photo Styling: Some items needed to be re-shot
Inquire with vendors about styling priorities around color and orientation
Vendor Inclusion: Some vendors were hurt to be excluded from test pop-up
Level set about online initiatives, timelines and objectives
Shipping Weight: Customer got $40 worth of overnight shipping for $17.99
Get scale or ask vendors for product weights
Promo Codes: Online shopping is competitive, especially during holidays
Consider incentive for those who shop at markets or receive A&F emails

ROUND 3 DELIVERABLES: Online Shop

With the holiday pop-up shop XX, we decided to try a phase two e-commerce experience with more products (~200), more vendors, more categories, and XXX. Lorem ipsum.

ANALYTICS

Throughout my work I presented monthly reports on traffic, clickthrough on vendor application submissions, new vs. returning visitors, blog views, email etc. For the holiday online pop-up shop, I tracked conversion and product XXX, and for the fuller online shop as well.

Unique visitors and page views were up, likely driven by increased push via FB, X, Y, Z (83% new)
But conversion was not that high - reasons: select product offering, no ability to see and feel products

CONCLUSIONS
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ARTISTS & FLEAS
Since the time I worked with Artists & Fleas, the brand has grown, opening pop-up and permanent markets in Atlanta, Berkeley, Marin County, at LaGuardia Airport, and Industry City in Brooklyn. They also launched and acquired two new brands—Regeneration, dedicated to vintage, thrift and upcycled fashion, and Manhattan Vintage, a four times a year event that brings together dealers and collectors from across the decades.