Jenny Lauren Jewelry enters the premium artisan jewelry space with over 800 pieces across 30 collections, the result of a remarkable six-year immersion in personal production. And save for a select group of devoted private clients, plus those who might have caught sight of some pieces before they sold out of the Urban Zen and Ralph Lauren stores, few have ever even seen the JLJ line.
Brand and customer experience design needed to conform to Jenny’s acute attention to detail in things like the product imagery provided by Carter Berg, one of the fashion industry’s premier photographers.
Because the online store was to be the new JLJ brand’s exclusive retail channel, it was decided that the on-site merchandising needed to raise the bar for the jewelry category and for e-commerce itself. Jenny wanted digital look books that belonged on the coffee table.
Key art montage we designed featuring “hero product” samples from a range of JLJ collections.
The biggest challenge, however, was developing an approach to e-commerce inventory, processing, and fulfillment that would not only be suitable for artisinal production, but manageable for a small creative operation. There were collections, but there were no criteria or controls in place for classification or segmentation based on attributes like sourcing, production, or availability.
Work proceeded on parallel tracks in order to accelerate the timeline to launch, with product organization and classification taking the priority spot in resource allocation. Competitive brand research was combined with on-the-ground investigations of the retail market for high-end beaded jewelry, as brand strategy and design explorations got underway.
Our JLJ Inventory Report provided a product segmentation based on extensive analysis on-site with Jenny in her Manhattan studio, and a proposed SKU methodology introduced an inventory process that could align with e-commerce requirements. These solutions brought both order and operational functionality to what had been a prolific but somewhat disorganized artistic endeavor.
Click the report cover to view contents.
Brand and PR strategy, key messaging, identity design, business system, packaging, and store design & development followed.
Typestyle selection, word-mark and logo design.
Key messaging, business system, tags, and packaging design (detail).
Product and photography quality prompted an unambiguous store design concept: just stay out of the way.
Marketing, advertising, and social media concepts were fully developed.
Key messaging sought to emphasis key differentiators as well as Jenny’s personal passion and commitment.
Messaging was designed to align with Jenny’s approach to her work, which included deep inspiration from geography and locations.
The best high-end fashion brands involve a lot of retouching work that doesn’t look like retouching work. Below, an example of extensive yet judicious retouching that achieves a certain ideal state but without compromising authenticity.
Hover back-and-forth across the picture to see our before-and-after. (On mobile devices use the slider control beneath the image.)
