Spirit Wares: marketing solution

A few months ago I was contacted by my friends at Spirit Wares to help them solve a problem marketing a new line of stoneware. The collection is beautiful, with unique unfinished sandy edges and thick bright white glaze.

The problem: what to name them?

Spirit Wares plate collections immediately evoke images of nature: blue water, silvery ice, mottled quail egg. The colours and textures are bold and recognizable. This is part of their brand identity. It sets Spirit Wares apart from other plate manufacturers, giving modern chefs inspiration with an original and natural canvas to work from.

But these particular plates are….WHITE… Although they are beautiful, their identity and how they fit into the Spirit Wares collection is not so easy to divine. The original name “Glazed White Marble” was not making an impression and sales were weak.

I was tasked with coming up with a new identity for the collection.

Here are a few examples of the plates:

When I got a chance to see them in person, their appeal was immediate. I saw something in them; I recognized them, especially on the edges where sandy raw stone meets the bright white glaze. This image is a perfect example:

Over the last few years I had been thinking about traveling to Hokkaido in winter. I wanted to experience one of the snowiest places on earth. I remembered seeing a few images of Japanese coastlines in winter that reminded me of the plate edges that I was looking at now. Here are a couple of the images below:

I thought that naming the collection with an easy association (“snow and sand” for example) was not very interesting. Instead, naming it after a place where this unusual natural phenomenon happens was far more appealing. The idea of naming it the “Hokkaido Collection” came from here.

The name “Hokkaido” sparks curiosity and gives personality to this snowy sandy plate collection that would otherwise get lost among its more colourful and easily recognizable competitors. A bump in sales after the renaming seems to back this up.

You can see all the collections at Spirit Wares