Design Challenge:
Thomas Smith & Co (Peterhead) Ltd., of Kirkburn Mills in Scotland, one of Scotland's largest manufacturers and suppliers of yarns and cloths to fashion houses such as Hugo Boss, Daks, MaxMara and Vivien Westwood to name just a few, and the owner of Scotland's only vertical mill, approached Touch Interactive to develop and manage their online interests.
As the holding company of J C Rennie (their yarn division), and Alexanders of Scotland (their cloth division) and with experience in supplying cloth and yarn to the fashion industry since 1798, Thomas Smith wanted a company website that reflected their heritage in this area but also to illustrate their current innovations in product development. The website would also need to show their collections on a seasonal basis.
Design Solution:
Our first approach was to visit the company in Scotland and with a guided tour of their factory we took a range of professional photographs and spoke to many employees from the design department to the factory floor. We wanted to know as much as we could about the company, its history, its strengths and interests and unique abilities. In fact two visits where made to Kirburn mills in Scotland which provided us with an unique insight, which we would not have gained otherwise.
From this point we began the design process of mixing colours and interactive themes in order to get the feeling we experience by our visit to Scotland. We were very much influenced by the photographs we took of the factory machinary and the vast range of wool colours which we found.
Although there is a lot of content in the website, with as many as seven yarn shade cards shown in full, as well as many samples of Alexanders cloth, the website has a simple navigation process and manages to include a very large amount of information without loosing the central theme of the company which we managed to convey through the design. Touch continues to work with Thomas Smith & Co., updating their website on a regular basis.
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