The problem
The site was selling beautiful objects but presenting them like a generic marketplace. Algorithmic personalisation surfaced “people also bought” rows; human curation, which was the brand’s whole reason for existing, was buried behind filters and tags.
New arrivals from independent designers, the most valuable inventory in commercial terms and the most distinctive in brand terms, sat below the fold on a homepage optimised for re-engagement, not discovery.
What we designed
We treated the homepage as a magazine cover, not a storefront. The hero became an editorial feature: this week, this maker, this collection. Personalisation moved down the page, where it could still surface relevant items without competing with the editorial layer above.
- Editorial homepage: hero feature, curated collections, designer spotlights
- Product detail: long-form, photography-first, with maker context inline
- Collection pages: shoppable but laid out like a curated room, not a grid
- Design system: 64 components, documented, handed off to the in-house team
The insight was simple: the curation is the product. If you can’t see the editorial intelligence behind the selection, you’ve lost the thing that makes it worth visiting.
The result
Online orders doubled in the first month after launch. The design system gave the in-house team the components to keep building on the new direction without us in the loop every week.