How It Started

Hiddlestone & Son offer bespoke kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms for which they deliver an incredible quality service and finish. They also have one of the most extensive and polished showrooms in and around the Bridgend area. In addition they are a family-run business. They sound great don’t they? And they are. However, when they initially approached us, Hiddlestone knew that they were completely under-selling themselves.

From our very first meeting with Hiddlestone & Son, we knew that we wanted to help them. We knew that they were are a business that should be successful. They offered an impressively bespoke and extremely high quality of service which elevated them far above and beyond their immediate competition. 

However, Hiddlestone & Son had one major problem: they were not willing to promote their brand as much as they should as they lacked a visual identity that resonated with their audience or reflected the business. They were almost ashamed to show their own brand over that of the leading product names that they offered. They had some impressive product brands to show off such as Laura Ashley, Symphony, Bosch, Aquadi just to mention a few. That’s quite a list of prominent industry brands that they allowed to completely overshadow their own. For example the Hiddlestone & Son logo was always positioned as an afterthought in relation to the product brands that they wanted to promote. Therefore, they positioned themselves purely as a supplier rather than a unique entity within their own right. This had to change and we knew that Hiddlestone must grow their own brand identity.

Initially, we were recommended to Hiddlestone & Son to assist them in creating a new logo and possibly a new website. From the first meeting we could see that Hiddlestone & Son were not projecting the high value of their offering enough either online or through their printed mediums and this transcended way beyond the creation of a logo and website. Yes, their visual brand identity and website lacked the polish that their services exhibited and failed to speak to their marketplace of their values, but they also needed to shift their mindset in the way that they promoted themselves. Their online identity did not generate leads directly, nor did it drive people to their showroom.

How We Worked Together

Digital Brand Strategy

From our discussions with them, Hiddlestone & Son obviously wanted to bring about change, therefore, we recommended digital strategy consultancy to them to better understand what made them tick and how best to express this. Our initial interactions with Hiddlestone & Son quickly developed into a digital strategy, full brand identity design and website design & development.

For the digital and brand strategy sessions, we held a series of discussions with Mark Hiddlestone – owner of the business – through an informal workshop where we scoped out the goals and objectives of what they wanted to achieve. We also discovered what really made up their brand personality, including what their core beliefs where. 

We discovered that the positioning of Hiddlestone & Son within their marketplace lagged behind that of their competitors. They didn’t project their true personality, nor did they distinguish themselves in any clear way against their main competitors. Therefore, our main task became to elevate their brand and to convey their core beliefs of quality service, top-line product range and no compromise in fitting or finishing. We also needed to help Hiddlestone communicate their fantastic showroom as a place to visit to get inspiration along with a feel for their solutions first-hand.

Branding and Identity Design

Post-digital strategy workshop, we then worked immediately on providing stylescapes and mockups for a new visual identity to best portray the Hiddlestone & Son brand personality. We journeyed through a series of revisions in order to achieve the objectives unearthed through the discovery workshops. Throughout this process, there was a clear and winning visual identity emerging that spoke of the clean finish and elegance that Hiddlestone strove to achieve for their customers. 

We finally arrived at a brand identity which we all felt Hiddlestone & Son could be proud of. Then we moved forward in helping them to project their brand through a digital footprint which would best support growth. Growth of their brand in the marketplace and growth of their sales.

Our process in achieving a brand redesign and digital strategy for Hiddlestone & Son included:

  • Stylescapes to identify an approximated visual identity that Hiddlestone & Son were excited to further develop.
  • Creation and refinement of a small series of logo variations. 
  • Creation of a wider brand identity through a series of mockups to see the versatility and context for the brand identity.
  • Print stationery designed and developed utilising the visual identity in the stylescapes and logo. 
  • A website redesign to help Hiddlestone & son build a marketing platform that communicated their services and values to their market effectively, but one which also promoted their showroom as a primary call-to-action.

What We Helped Hiddlestone To Achieve

One of the major wins for Hiddlestone & Son was in their own confidence to elevate and position their branding more prominently than the brands for which they provide products. Hiddlestone & Son now have a brand which they are proud to show off to prospective customers and position front and centre above that of the previously dominant product brands. This took some courage to do, as well as faith in the power of their new identity. What’s more is that it worked!

Since the creation of a new identity system and redesign of the Hiddlestone & Son website, their business has exploded into growth. The brand identity has received widespread acclaim and has helped to reposition Hiddlestone & Son as one of the premier providers of kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms once again. The business, once more, now looks like what is  – a leading providers within South Wales.

Prior to the re-brand there were no leads captured through the website at all. It was doing nothing for them. Now, the Hiddlestone & Son website is generating leads and crucially directing footfall to their showroom.