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
- Unify brand message across breadth of range
- Increase brand recognition and loyalty with new audiences
Read on to find out how this project not only met but exceeded all expectations…

Organisation

Sutton Tools

Team

Willem Coté - Creative Director
Shaun Bryndzia – Concept Design
KL Tan - Graphic Design
Beatrice Ng – Graphic Design

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 and icon driven 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 categories: 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, an extensive library of icons were developed to communicate what the product can do in a simple visual form. Icons were grouped by application, and unique call outs highlighting the product benefits.
With a self-service focus, the packaging utilises a clear typeface hierarchy including succinct descriptions with selling features, as well as helpful hints on use, supporting first-timers and reducing returns.
This visual language is being translated across packaging, online and printed catalogues.

Design Challenge

- Unify brand message 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 commissioning the creation of a defined library of 40 common material icons which can be used across the entire product range.
Constraints on the design process were that each icon needed to work within a 7.5mm square space, be instantly recognisable without supporting text, and communicate as a single colour object.

- Increase brand recognition and loyalty
Utilising modern design elements such as vibrant colour, pattern, icons and clear type, the cohesive design with stronger on-shelf presence was achieved. Interestingly, the visual language and selection method become part of the brands identity.

Effectiveness

Feedback from the consumer was just how instant the messaging was compared with the previous design. Icon designs and selection of typeface were appropriate to reaching the customer base across a broad age group. Particular care was taken to ensure readability was enhanced.
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!