Frette is one of the oldest and most respected names in luxury linens. From the altars of the Vatican to the Titanic, Frette’s work graces the some of the most storied locations in the world.

Gorilla was engaged by Frette with the idea of marrying an old-world brand with an up-to-date experience that would reflect an overall intent to appeal to a relatively younger market.

Frette’s product is one driven by relationships. More specifically, collections are at the heart of the Frette brand. Previous iterations of the Frette site fell short in making the product relationships transparent.

The result is a site that brands when it needs to, sells when appropriate and provides a backbone to educate new loyalists to the intricate product relationships.

It’s been a little less than a month since I rolled out the new version on WordPress. Still very very happy. I’ve been mostly focusing on updating my neglected content. I swear I will never let myself get this behind on posting work again, this process is awful, but well worth it. The site is stripped down on purpose in favor of content so it’s no surprise I’m choosing to focus most of my energy there.

Very proud of the work coming out of Gorilla, its great to see all the hard work of the team there coming together.

After content is in better shape I’m going to spend some time on the UI of the home page. Not really satisfied with where that is.

More to come.

Shure, a legend in the audio equipment industry, turned to Gorilla to design and develop a microsite for the launch of their Axient line of products.

Gorilla helped Shure’s product team develop a digital vision and strategy for the Axient line that would not only unveil the brand, but help educate Shure customers on a truly revolutionary audio system.

Gorilla’s broad apprach to E-commerce meant creating a site that was based on product, but in the end seeks to drive customers to Shure dealers to complete the purchase. A common approach with big-ticket, highly complex products.

Huzza is a boutique located in the resort town of Harbor Springs, Michigan. They cater to the high-end market with an appreciation for an uncluttered experience.

With a truly eclectic mix of product ranging from antique housewares to fragrances to custom curated apparel, Huzza seeks to be a taste-maker.

The result is a spare design aesthetic and stripped down feature-set that places only the absolute essentials of the product in the initial view. Customers are not limited however and are allowed to find what they need to make an educated decision with a minimum of exploration.

Apparel retailer OMG Jeans is well known in Manhattan, but relatively unheard of outside of New York. The inaugural launch of omgjeans.com not only needed to bring some New York energy to the rest of the world, but also convey some of the core aspects of what makes OMG unique – service and the ability to match you with a product that is right, not necessarily what you were looking for.

The site has a massive feature set, OMG wanted to take full advantage of as many features as was prudent within Magento, and then some.

OMG Jeans also features a robust Facebook Connect tie-in. A very active social marketing strategy was a must-have given the marketing and conversion goals OMG set out to achieve at the beginning of the project.

Greenheart shop is a fair-trade focused retailer based in Chicago based on the philosophy that every product they sell is created by an artisan that they have a personal relationship with.

Products are centered on the values of sustainability – recycled and locally sourced materials are commonplace.

While the product and brand are very compelling on their own, among the many unique challenges to a retailer like Greenheart is the ability to showcase a wide array of product categories in a way that makes sense. Secondly, shopping in relation to a specific artisan and by country of origin were critical to reflecting the Greenheart mission in the end user experience.

Michael Antonio Footwear had made a name for themselves over the years being the shoes for the party girl. Marketed chiefly to teenage girls, or those seeking a disposable pair for a night on the club circuit, Michael Antonio wanted to move upmarket into a more career focused and practical offering for customers seeking something a little more focused. That said, MAF knew their customer would always be the party scene, it was important not to lose sight of that.

Just as important to the folks at MAF was the idea of pushing an image not just a shoe. The product has a youthful, fickle audience and the site needed to push Michael Antonio into the forefront of digital style.

Michael Antonio also had three somewhat confusing product lines, they wanted the site to help clarify where the lines were between them.

The site features a unique tie-in with a social blogging strategy, as well as fulfillment through key partners like Zappos and Piperlime.

Panini Authentic is the signed memorabilia division of Panini America. This site was done as an extension of the Panini brand, creating a unique experience for a product that was to demand a considerably higher price point than standard sports memorabilia.

The concept behind the authentic line is that Panini becomes the official provider of authentic signed artifacts for a given athlete. This plays an important role in not only the sourcing and verification of material, but also control of that athletes product distribution. This means a Panini athlete will always be seeding just the right amount of product to keep their brand at its peak.

Panini came to Gorilla with some package assets in hand, as well as rights to a great deal of photography. It was our job to craft and experience and user interface that was both meaningful in the sports market, but indicative of a high-end brand.

The end result is a interface with just the right balance of modern day sensationalism, fused with a slight emphasis on heritage. This is a product that is an investment and as such a slightly nostalgic feeling is evoked.

Gorilla also assisted in fleshing out two key programs for the site. Hologram Lookup allows users to verify a unique serial for each Panini Authentic product. The Submit Your Own channel allows users to send in their own memento with the idea that a sponsored athlete will sign something that belongs to them.

I’ll make this quick, I’ve been at this a while and I’m tired as shit right now.

As you can tell, I redesigned the site, I took the opportunity to replatform from Textpattern to WordPress. I loved Textpattern when I started using it, and it served me really well. There’s a part of me that will always love it’s spartan approach, something WordPress certainly is not.

That said, I’ve moved away from the technical side of things over the years. I needed a platform that was going to support my needs and not force me to do a lot of what TXP required.

Some Thoughts on the Whole Process

Migration was easy at first, but the finer points of getting all of my legacy content squared away was a real pain considering I don’t post all that much. No surprise there, it was what I expected and I’m sure I’ll be mopping up to that end for weeks.

As a platform, WP has come a long way. It’s far more advanced than what I remember, and not having to do a ton of apache config work was a real plus, I just don’t have the energy for that anymore.

I wanted a platform to showcase the creative work, that was really my impetus for the switch. Posting in TXP was a bit of pain, so I went with Allan Cole’s Autofocus Theme as the backbone for the site. It’s still in need of a fair amount of customization to fit my needs, but it’s a good start. Allan does awesome work and at $25 the pro version is an absolute steal. Every single time I thought of ripping the theme open and customizing the crap out of it Allan had thought of some feature that got the basics in place. Cheers man, if we ever meet, I’m buying some beers.

One thing I will mention, is I will dearly miss the supportive and very resourceful TXP community. Having prowling WP forums for answers for six weeks now I can say I wish the same caliber of people were on WP, just not true. I’ll miss you guys. WP is awesome, I’m happy and super impressed, but I’ll always love the stripped down scrappy nature of TXP.

A Note on SEO

Some of you may be coming to the site via 404 since I relaunched. Yes I realize it’s best practice to have the SEO equity transitioned to the new site. I didn’t have that much anyway, and it’s a pretty small site, didn’t feel it was worth the effort. Google will pick it up in due time. SEO was never the objective anyway.

Custo Barcelona is one hell of a brand. They have a sense of style unlike any other in the world. It takes a huge amount of self-confidence to pull off Custo Style, because you’re going to look like a fireball blasting down the street in this stuff. If you’re going to wear Custo, people are going to take notice.

It’s exactly that brash, in-your-face attitude that we tried to capture when we designed to Custo shopping experience. We wanted to capture the glamorous, decadent red-carpet experience indicative of a brand that is known the world over for it’s bleeding-edge style and it’s raw, artistic driven aesthetic bent on getting noticed.

Of course, in the end, people still need to buy. One challenge particular to the boutique brand is finding the right balance of style and function that will convey the voice, but still be logical. The space is awash with incomprehensible experiences, this absolutely could not be one of them.

The site was built on Magento Enterprise, which at the time was still rather new on the scene, but not these days. It was a platform very well suited to Custo’s needs being that it supported localization and uses of different currencies and fulfillment based on location.