Creating a home furnishings brand like no other
Lancashire-based company SMD have supplied high street retailers with high end furnishing fabrics for over 25 years. They realised lots of people want beautifully designed home interiors, but find it hard to put together a coordinated look from different sources. SMD saw an opportunity to create a one stop shop range built around a number of looks where ‘everything goes with everything’, making shopping incredibly easy. They came to us with a brief to develop a consumer brand strategy and accompanying identity for the new range – christened iLiv – that would encourage business owners to stock it and customers to buy it.
iLiv’s mission is to make interior design more fun, accessible and easier for everyone to do. Building on this we came up with the positioning of ‘magical combinations’ based on the idea that a successful look is more than the sum of its parts.
We brought this to life with an identity based on collages created from elements of the iLiv range that literally showed how the different elements work together to create a stunning look. We then applied this idea to collateral ranging from brochures and website to exhibition stands and in-store point of sale, as well as working with iLiv’s in-house design team to integrate it into their latest collections.
iLiv launched in February 2013, and sales and growth has been impressive. At the time of writing, iLiv fabrics are available in over 400 stores across Britain, while iLiv’s products are now stocked by almost 200 outlets. SMD are also exporting iLiv to Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, Canada and South Africa, with more countries confidently predicted. If that’s not a result we don’t know what is.
“We’re delighted with the work and more importantly our customers have given great feedback. Kin brought a very strategic approach to the whole project, really challenging our assumptions and giving rock-solid commercial rationales for all their ideas.”
Jason Kenworthy, MD SMD