Egginton Brothers had seen so much
Admired by Chefs around the world as the makers of the finest knife sharpening steels. In the 80s they bought up the famous brand names of Sheffield Steel Knife Makers – William Rogers, Ibberson, George Wostenholm and Joseph Rodgers.
But having survived the greatest deindustrialisation of any western nation in the 1980s – they were tormented by high energy costs, foreign competition, availability of the latest in manufacturing technology and the widely inaccurate and abstract dragging of traditional makers into awful knife crime issues that never involved hand crafted premium brands or collector’s items.
They needed a fresh image and a boost to online sales.
High Quality Steels admired by Chefs for over a Century, needed High Quality Life Style shots to spread that admiration
Photography (c) Matt Swift.
Approach
Blue Strawberry Elephant, had produced new websites for several Heritage manufacturing companies – William Whiteley the World’s oldest scissor manufacturer, Thomas Flinn Saw Manufacturers, the refreshing uplift of Pryor Marking – revitalising the way they were seen – internally and externally. We were asked to carry out an equal transformation for Egginton Brothers their Steels and heritage knife brands.
A Blue Strawberry Elephant Concept
for a Crisp and Contemporary Ecommerce Website,
was way ahead of it’s time while evoking all the Heritage of the old brands and trade marks.
Process
While we started planning the work on the website – we HAD to modernise the Branding – the final master logo a contemporary integrated unit with a familiar heritage feel and subtle colour ways.
That work included a new trademark for etching and engraving onto the steel products, matching the new brand logo style.
By digging the foundations of the total project simultaneously – Site, Brand, Packaging Concepts, Social Media and Advertising – each informed the rest in a natural creative evolution.
The knowledge, experience and skills required for true Branding and Professional Graphic Design is not something a Robot possesses.
What we did
We designed the Website using everything from the Branding work, disseminating the colour ways to place tools into categories – opening up a wider range of Market Segments – laying the foundations for future campaigns and packaging.
The layout was organised as a clean (three years ahead of its time) Bento Box home page for fast navigation to specific areas of interest, with an eye on the social media campaigns it would be linked to.
- New ECommerce Website
- Photo / Art Direction
- New Brand Identity
- Packaging Concepts
- Social Media Campaigns & Promotions
- Research and Campaign Copywriting
Over 300 product photographs, showing the absolute quality and detail of Historic Brand products.
Outcome
Interest in all the Eggington owned brands accelerated – promotions sold out – orders, queries and amazing reviews came from around the world.
But the underlying business issues were added to by technical manufacturing disruption, the loss of key players and increasing supply chain agony with “other end” delivery problems from complying with new legislation.
The family firm decided not to take even more battering – and sold out.
If the new website, branding and planned creative marketing had been pursued earlier …
…but it did its job as so many others before it, in presenting an enterprise and established product range as a viable, exciting opportunity for someone else to carry forward.
The famous knife brands are now part of the Duham Duplex family and the Steels – still being sold as Egginton Brothers – have been encompassed into William Whitely; a client of ours for 20 years, who had already been bought out after being a family firm themselves since before the founding of the United States of America.
Someone else is selling the products now – with an unknown future presentation planned – but that as they say is “just business” .
We are still so proud to have been the creators of this great iteration.