The Issue:

Duchess China is a Stoke-on-Trent-based company producing beautiful, fine bone china with a simple, elegant, classic design. The company produces a quality, high value product at a competitive price, but needed to communicate that message to new and existing customers in the face of lower quality products coming into the UK from Eastern manufacturers.

The Challenge:

Creative Avenue was called in to develop a solution, to combat the overseas competition and to develop new revenue streams, all within a limited budget.

Our Response:

After taking a detailed brief, we proposed a series of cost-effective measures which would strengthen their brand within their existing markets, and create new, profitable sales channels.

The Execution:

The first stage of the project was to look at their branding and make it consistent, while at the same time, creating a new, clean, fresh look for their promotional material. A look which emphasised the quality, value, style and craftsmanship inherent in the product. We directed new photography and put together a promotional package which including direct mail and sales leaflets. We also designed, developed and built a new e-commerce website for B2B.

The Result:

New customers/profits have been gained despite the increased competition from the Far East. And the new e-commerce site has opened up a completely new, and successful, sales channel for the company.

"We'd heard good things about Creative Avenue and approached them about a major project to produce a new ecommerce website. From the start, we were impressed. They rapidly gained an understanding of our product portfolio, our brand heritage, our marketing to date and the additional ways we wanted to promote our products in the future.

In addition to marketing to businesses, we wanted to generate online sales from members of the public. Creative Avenue provided us with a whole range of branding and marketing advice which was a powerful force in helping shape our new direction.

Creative Avenue handled the structure, programming and design of our new e-commerce website and art directed the photography, all within our agreed budgets.

The new site has worked extremely well and sales are excellent. We have continued to use Creative Avenue for over four years now to design and produce a range of marketing collateral, including sales aids."

Marketing & Sales Director