CLIENT
LA Dance Designs
INDUSTRY
Retail Dance
Apparel
Despite its name, LA Dance is located in Boca Raton, Florida, where it has slowly established itself as one of the most popular outlets serving the nation’s burgeoning dance industry.
LA Dance’s sizable facility includes an on-site design studio and production facility that allows the company to custom-design and tailor most of the dance, dance school uniforms and ballet outfits it sells.
Having spent a number of years growing its brand presence and serving the area’s modern dance market, LA Dance Designs purchased local competitor “The Shape Shop for Dance,” which had dominated the local ballet dance market.
CHALLENGE
LA Dance Design’s acquisition of The Shape Shop for Dance left the company feeling uncertain about how to proceed – in terms of both branding and technology.
Should the Shape Shop brand be fully absorbed into the LA Dance Design brand, or should the 25-year old Shape Shop brand remain intact as an element or division of the LA brand so that its customers would still recognize and patronize it?
The acquisition also meant that the Shape Shop website and its customer data would have to be integrated into the business somehow – without negatively impacting either market (modern or ballet).
This required a high level of detail to ensure that critical data would be properly preserved and kept accessible in the new web platform. Customer accounts, permissions, and past orders needed to be aligned and seamlessly integrated into the new database, as would point-of-sale services, products, and communications services.
Further, the client was very concerned whether ANY changes to these brands or their websites would have a negative impact upon their core businesses.
Ideally, the goal was to streamline both brands, but retain their identities in both e-commerce and brick and mortar storefronts.
STRATEGY
DAMN GOOD recognized that without a solid direction, the potential for brand confusion in the client’s audience was extremely high. The agency advised the client to “own the acquisition” and absorb the Shape Shop brand, however the client was not willing to commit to that step.
So instead, DAMN GOOD proposed a compromise solution: Re-branding The Shape Shop as “LA Boutique” so that the brand was more aligned with the LA Dance Designs brand, but yet still distinct.
This was essential in allowing the agency to provide the technology infrastructure stack required to create an improved and unified ecommerce experience.
SOLUTION
The two websites would be merged into one, but would still present separately with different product offerings, like two sides of the same coin. The upgraded e-commerce experience included private group ordering (custom pricing and permissions), custom product manufacturing inquiries, public bulk order purchasing, traditional e-commerce catalog purchasing, and multiple customer levels.
Messaging would then tie the old Shape Shop brand to the new LA Boutique brand so that its loyal customer base could be retained with limited impact to either brand during the transitional period.
Despite DAMN GOOD’s assurances, the client remained apprehensive about the transition. So the agency constructed a consultation-driven business migration roadmap that listed clear transition steps, developmental benchmarks, and timelines.
This provided an important touchpoint for the client to follow the development of the website in tandem with the more visible and less abstract branding.
RESULTS
PROCESS
As with all clients, DAMN GOOD conducted a substantial volume of research in its discovery phase, learning as much as possible about the client’s business, markets, and competitive landscape.
Although the agency was confident in its consultative effort to advise the client to merge its brands into one, it still listened to the client’s concerns and worked within LA Dance Designs’ comfort zone to ensure the ultimate solution would both achieve their goals and meet their expectations.
As the DAMN GOOD design team revised and aligned the brands visually, the web development team worked to establish the integrated e-commerce architecture and successfully migrate customer data into a unified system that integrated with the client’s CRM.
Once the new web platform was complete and fully QA tested, LA Dance Designs administrators were provided hands-on training, allowing them to use and update the website as needed.
