Crafter's Companion

Enabling international growth & increasing sales by 172%

Crafting an online experience for international expansion

Craft products are purchased by customers seeking to express their creativity, which means the audience demographic is wide, and thus the opportunity for craft sellers is international! 

Crafters Companion were ready to take this next big step. Having grown their collection of products from crafting tools to sewing materials, what started as an idea in a university bedroom had quickly grown into a business employing 190 staff with a HQ in County Durham, an office in California and a bricks-and-mortar store. 

Lost in translation

Crafters’ biggest challenge was that they were trying to serve their international audiences based in the US and the EU with their UK site. 

Our 3 relationship with Crafter’s means we were able to pinpoint this as an opportunity for growth, and work closely with them to make internationalisation a reality. 

Crafter’s knew that if they were to expand further internationally they needed to re-develop their eCommerce experience to become more engaging both for their local and international customers. 

We were seeking to unify their online experience, whilst adapting to the wants and needs of their US and EU customer base. We needed to both revamp the look and feel of their website, whilst generating user experiences that could cater for an international audience base. 

International eCommerce sites for international audiences

JH initially set-up a series of discovery workshops with Crafters Companion in order to better understand the complexities of their business model and offering to customers. 

Crafters needed to increase their site traffic by encouraging new, international customers to visit their site. As their business model focuses on customer loyalty and retention schemes, it was critical the site these international customers were landing on was set-up to give them what they need.

We worked with Crafters to map out how multiple sites would work for target countries based in the EU and US, without losing the unified brand experience and recognition Crafters has become known for in the UK.  

A rebrand was necessary to ensure this was the case across multiple sites, as was a migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 to boost site performance across the entire online experience for Crafter’s.

We integrated a new payment gateway with Adyen in order to handle international payments online and launched new services with Klevu and Nosto so Crafters could both personalise offerings based on customers locations and past purchases whilst simultaneously getting to know their new audiences better to enable future growth and success. 

We also integrated Crafters’ sites with Brightpearl so that internal operations such as inventory planning and shipping fulfilment was synergised.

A big hit in the USA

The new sites developed for Crafter’s growing international audience has led to a 100% increase in orders from the US! 

We’re excited to continue working with Crafter’s in order to expand on their success internationally and look forward to seeing them become a globally recognised eCommerce business for all things craft!