Image Credit : In House photography
Project Overview
Sutton Tools is a market-leading brand in the power tool accessory category, approaching its centennial year in 2017. It’s users are ‘doers’ who focus on making things happen with precision and drive. With over 20,000 individual items Sutton’s breadth and depth of range is a clear asset. With the intention to modernise and consolidate the branding, a solution needed to be found for the following challenges:
- Introduce a market-changing system for tool categorisation and selection
- Get the tradie in-and-out of the shop in record time, reducing down-time and increasing profit
- Facilitate an up-sell strategy - increasing shopper spend and retailer profit
- Unify brand across breadth of range
- Increase brand recognition and loyalty with new audiences
- Reduce packing costs by material usage or efficiency gains
- Meet the environmental requirements set by the Australian Packaging Covenant, of which Sutton Tools is a signatory
Read on to find out how this project not only met but exceeded all expectations…
Organisation
Team
Willem Coté - Creative Director
KL Tan - Design
Shaun Bryndzia – Design
Paul Heath (TMC Agency) – Concept Design
Beatrice Ng – Artwork
Tony Hudson – Packing Facility Engineer
Project Brief
Sutton Tools is a market-leading brand in the power tool accessory category, approaching its centennial year in 2017. With over 20,000 individual items Sutton’s breadth and depth of range is a clear asset, however the branding was beginning to become fragmented and quite disparate between ranges.
Sutton Tools needed to modernise its product presentation and support a ‘self-service’ strategy within the hardware industry targeting Industrial, Trade & DIY consumers. The design needed to consider the shopper purchase decision hierarchy of application, size, selection reassurance and price.
The new packaging needed to increase differentiation amongst the market, promote brand continuity and shopper’s loyalty, whilst supporting future growth and expansion into new categories.
Project Innovation/Need
- Introduce a market-changing system for tool categorisation
It was determined to create a colour-based classification system, surrounding the users primary decision hierarchy of selection by application.
This system creates an area where consumers can easily identify different tools in four distinct catagories: Wood, Metal, Masonry & Specialty
- Get the tradie in-and-out of the shop in record time
The newly conceived type hierarchy allows swift identification and recognition of product families, their features and specific sizes.
Vital to making the in-store experience feel simple and easy, a library of icons were developed to communicate what the product can do in a simple visual form.
With a self-service focus, the packaging includes succinct descriptions with selling features, as well as helpful hints on use, supporting first-timers and reducing returns.
- Stand out from the crowd
Utilising modern design elements including a unique ‘cut-out’ shape, the new packaging has stronger on-shelf presence. The ergonomic pack shape fits neatly in the hand, supporting an unconscious decision to purchase.
- Facilitate an up-sell strategy
With the introduction of ProSeries a two-tier product system was created to build a platform for future range expansion and increase value to the customer.
Design Challenge
- Unify brand across breadth of range
The biggest challenge within this project was to communicate a lot of information within a tiny 45x140mm footprint, and also create a sense of unity across thousands of items and many packaging types. This was achieved by the introduction of a common corporate colour.
- Increase brand recognition and loyalty
Utilising modern design elements such as vibrant colour, pattern and clear type, the cohesive design with stronger on-shelf presence was achieved. The unique shape keeps Sutton’s style distinguishable and memorable. A cross-promotional section works extra hard to promote other ranges.
- Reduce packing costs by material or efficiency gains
A full assessment of internal packing processes lead to an in-house designed and built system that produced a higher quality product with a reduction in material consumption and a 300% improvement in total output. This pushed the limits within the packaging supply chain. Our process has since been recognised as a best in class facility in Australia.
- Meet the environmental requirements set by the Australian Packaging Covenant
Sutton Tools was able to reduce consumption, use recyclable materials, and wherever possible utilise whole-of-life packaging.
Effectiveness
The design process which started off as a brand refresh lead to a complete end-to-end assessment of the retailer and consumer requirement, as well as the lifecycle of the product and packaging processes. This project has provided a clear roadmap for the brand and product development.
Within the distribution network, Sutton Tools has already achieved significant success with increased ranging with many major retail groups who were all highly engaged with the new creative and categorisation system. This has also lead to a 15% increase in sales with existing customer ranges due to better presentation.
Consumer surveys has found an increase in brand engagement, position and conversion of values with target demographics due to the new designs, proving
WORLD CLASS CUTTING TOOLS NEVER LOOKED BETTER!
Graphic Design - Three Dimensional
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in traditional or digital visual representation of ideas and messages used in packaging. Consideration given to: clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience; the approach, including marketing and branding concerns, the dynamics of the retail environment, environmental considerations, and legal requirements; the component parts of packaging graphics such as colour rationalisation, information layout, feel and tone of illustration and photography, and finishes, and how they are used in isolation and in relation to each other; and the relationship to the anatomy of the structural design.
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