Strategic Design: Case Study
NEST Line Extensions, Comms/Branding, In-Store Experience, Enterprise Support Portal, Chain of Supply, Staffing...
"NEST Couture Collections" Products Launches
NEST Studio: Women Collection
Challenge
The original NEST Jewelry line has enjoyed significant development and growth over the past 15 years. A strategic growth decision was made to explore the extension of the brand into additional lines of clothing for women, men, and children. The creative challenge was to conserve and shepherd the original NEST brand essence, "Organic Luxury," that was at the heart of the successful jewelry line over the past 15 years. The development of the sub-brands - NEST Studio, NEST Men, NEST Kiddo and NEST Leggs - had to be carefully weighted and developed in accordance to existing brand equity.
The original NEST Jewelry line has enjoyed significant development and growth over the past 15 years. A strategic growth decision was made to explore the extension of the brand into additional lines of clothing for women, men, and children. The creative challenge was to conserve and shepherd the original NEST brand essence, "Organic Luxury," that was at the heart of the successful jewelry line over the past 15 years. The development of the sub-brands - NEST Studio, NEST Men, NEST Kiddo and NEST Leggs - had to be carefully weighted and developed in accordance to existing brand equity.
Creative Insight
Drawing from NEST's brand equity, the creative direction was formed around an appeal to upscale, fashion-forward customers who also craved convenience, comfort, and value. Therefore, high-quality arthouse-style photography - relying largely on compelling visuals as opposed to clever copy or tag lines - was used to appeal to a young, hip, upwardly-mobile demographic.
Execution
A wide range of deliverables were strategically planned and organized prior to original development and first rounds of funding. Fully rendered prototypes of line sheets, packagings, in-store retail displays and point-of-sales pieces, advertising, packaging, manufacturing guidelines, and more were all included in the strategic development for further evaluation, testing and measurement of key metrics.
Our Strategic Design team engaged in the following five core steps:
• 1: Researched and Observed the current business model, products, services, consumers, employees, suppliers, vendors, partners
• 2. Assembled a Strategy/Design Team to cover all areas of expertise (Packaging, advertising, retail, logistics, technologies, processes, organization)
• 3. Prototyped to think and understand to give executive team a wholistic view of "The Art of the Possible"
• 4. Prototyped to evaluate and measure the ideas selected and assess inter-dependencies between individual projects
• 5. Iterate on design until go-to-market readiness by making measurable incremental improvements on all co-existing prototypes
Why It Works
A systematic and organized approach to evolving and expanding the current brand and line of business enabled the executive team to crystalize their vision and start planning on next evolutionary steps. The strategic alignment allowed cross-disciplinary teams to start putting in place realistic and tangible prototypes to quickly assess feasibility and viability of the early concepts established during the discovery phase. Once appropriate success metrics were put in place, a wide range of prototypes (from pop up stores, to packaging, to advertising to clothing labels) were tested and pushed forward, or discarded, at very little expense of resources for the company.
Establishing a Strategic Foresight roadmap early on enabled the executive, creative and development teams to align quickly on assessing and prioritizing the evolution and expansion of the brand
Extensive Employees, business partners and consumers research was conducted and visualized through a Service Blueprint to highlight relationships between actors, methodologies and technologies.
NEST Studio Partner Portal provides all vendors, manufacturers and retailers with a vast range of services from manufacturing scheduling, shipping updates, marketing support...
Future State: The ability to visually overlay the multiple journeys of the multiple actors who will be involved in the retail space enables the team to identify potential problem spaces to be addressed with the team. People/Processes/Technologies must be evaluated in order to bring forth a truly holistic picture of the retail journey envisioned.
The NEST Studio Enterprise Partner Portal exemplifies an intuitive User Interface where Form and Function blend seamlessly to provide a satisfying experience for the users.
NEST Studio: Women Collection
NEST Studio: Women Collection
NEST Leggs: Lingerie & Hosiery Collection
NEST Studio Collection: Packagings
NEST Studio: Boutique
The free-standing NEST concept stores, and possibly the in-stores boutiques, will include retail tech innovations such as:
• In-store online reviews through the SnapTag app, for example.
• Tailored recommendations based on customer social-media data.
• Virtual try-on to develop personalized looks and obtain advice from style bloggers.
• Body scan to issue personalized custom shopping list suitable to customer measurements.
• Several innovations involving digital wallets and hands-free technologies.
• In-store online reviews through the SnapTag app, for example.
• Tailored recommendations based on customer social-media data.
• Virtual try-on to develop personalized looks and obtain advice from style bloggers.
• Body scan to issue personalized custom shopping list suitable to customer measurements.
• Several innovations involving digital wallets and hands-free technologies.
NEST Men Collection
NEST Men Collection
NEST Men: Bag
NEST Kiddo: Girls Collection
NEST Brand and Manufacturing Guidelines
