Project Overview
With more than 110 million tonnes of textiles going into landfill each year and modern slavery rife in third world manufacturing, the global fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world… second only to big oil (Eileen Fisher).
And while most fashion brands are struggling to come to terms with the reality of the challenges faced by global fashion, the op-shop industry is sitting there with a solution - recycled fashion.
The problem is, we all take op-shops for granted. They are dusty, smelly and drab places. But what if we could change that? What if we could transform the op-shopping experience into an inspirational place for treasure hunting, while celebrating the social and environmental good the stores deliver.
In November 2020, we launched a transformed brand and customer experience for one of the best known op-shops in the world, Salvos Stores.
This project was rolled out across every business touchpoint, including:
1. A fully integrated brand identity platform;
2. A reimagined store design;
3. A new e-commerce platform;
4. An integrated launch campaign.
This undertaking not only helped to highlight the impactful social and environmental work championed by the business, but continues to open Salvos Stores to a whole new shopper - one becoming increasingly aware of the environmental and social benefits of shopping second hand.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
The General Store
Matt Newell, Founder & CEO
Madeleine Livesey, COO
Chris Scott, Executive Creative Director
Julia Elton-Bott, Art Director
Luke Mathers, Designer
Darren Bailey, Producer
Tanya Green, Group Account Director
Renaud Frisé, Digital Director
Caroline Resseguier Store Design
Andrew Kohn, Project Director
Project Brief
Our brief was to reinvent the customer experience of one of the world’s best op-shop brands. Our aim was to make it a beacon for the circular economy that would inspire others to join the movement.
We re-energised every aspect of the brand including:
- Brand identity;
- Store design;
- Website (delivering the first e-commerce enabled op-shop in the country);
- Integrated advertising campaign.
The key commercial objective was to broaden the customer base from people shopping for value (often those in need) to include people shopping for good (to support sustainability and community values).
Project Innovation/Need
We launched the new brand platform with a Christmas campaign that encouraged children to tell Santa what they would like to GIVE for Christmas, rather than ask Santa what they would like to GET.
This was supported with a TVC featuring an animated Christmas tale about Santa waking up to the damage his toy factory was creating and, instead, turning to Salvos Stores to give second hand gifts. The campaign was picked up by national news broadcasters, which helped add weight to the idea of up-cycled gifting for Christmas.
We created Australia's first shoppable e-commerce website in the category by overcoming the challenge of decentralised stock. We created a marketplace back-end and trained team members in-store on how to upload products to the website.
We created an entirely new store design concept to broaden the appeal to a new customer base (shopping for good) without alienating the brand’s core customers (shopping for value). One of the novel features was to shift the donation zone to the customer service zone so that team members can say ‘thank you’ to everyone who makes a donation (rather than the impersonal process of dumping goods in a ‘bin’ out the back).
And we wrapped the entire customer experience together in a contemporary brand identity platform with a glowing circle at its heart - a powerful symbol of the circular economy.
Design Challenge
There are so many challenges in a large-scale brand transformation like this one. But perhaps the biggest one was around PEOPLE.
We had to design a process that would bring a 100+ year old organisation on a journey of massive change. We had to invite people who had been with the business for decades to think differently so that we could collectively seize the opportunity that exists for the op-shop category today. And we had to find a way to attract a new audience to the brand without losing its core customers.
This could not have been achieved without the vision of the senior leadership team at Salvos Stores, and The General Store takes great pride in the role we played to support this journey. It was a seamless combination of process design and delivery, strategy, and creative all coming together to deliver for this important design project.
Future Impact
Since launching the new brand platform in November 2020, our story around the circular economy has reached an estimated 18 million people across national news coverage, social content and the store network of 350 stores.
National store sales have been hit hard by COVID lockdowns but the store concept in Marrickville traded up 126% (ave daily sales) before being closed for COVID.
Christmas 2020 set a new national sales record for Salvos Stores - despite the challenges inflicted by COVID on the core customer base.
Online sales exploded in their first year with 84,000 items listed and 64,000 items sold since launch. Online sales have beaten budget by more than double.
The brand platform is currently under review for a global rollout.
Better Future - Circular Economy
Projects that expand and grow the use of circular economy principles.
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