Friday 25 February 2011

An new start with a new brochure...

Now I am going to start by admitting something that is often very hard for people like me to say..

I got it wrong.. (you can quote this)..

Now that statement has a pretty wide scope to it, so let me put it into perspective for you. When I first started Dovcor, my knowledge ran to how to make good products. I had no clue how to sell them, and certainly not how to market them correctly.

So like any good student, I got a few brochures, studied them, and then set about taking the best bits from each and making my first brochure. Now logic states that this should leave me with the best brochure going... but it didn't.. so what went wrong?



Well firstly, it was based upon everyone else's brochure.. meaning it had no individual identity.. I was telling people we were different.. but our brochure didn't say it (well it did actually, in written form, but not in terms of looks).

It had a good layout, it had nice bathroom sets, and it even had the prices laid out so as to show the total price you pay.. and yet it just didn't work. Now there are a few reasons for this, toilets blocking vital design pieces, and roofs visible in reflections, but these were minor points.

In reality the brochure neither worked as a sales piece or represented who we are.

The first part is straight forward... you can't put your best selling unit near the back of the brochure and expect people to find it, if its your best unit.. show it off.

But the second issue, the one of not representing Dovcor is a hard one.. and one that took me too long to figure out.

I suppose its like being a parent, so proud of what I had created I was blind to its failings. Essentially, as I set off I knew nothing of the importance of image to a brand, and now from my own failings I have learnt just how vital it is.

Image doesn't just mean getting the products right..its far more complicated than that. If you have a brand, everything you do should match that brand, your people, your website, and especially your brochure. What we had were designer products, with a run of the mill brochure.. 2+2 certainly did not equal four.

We had a £600 unit essentially being sold under the same marketing technique as a £50 one, albeit with expensive paper! What I had failed to realise was that while others had made this mistake, their brands were already established with the stores, so it didn't matter if they got it wrong... so much so that getting it wrong became the industry norm.

To anyone looking in from the outside, this norm appeared to be the way forward, so those inexperienced in the industry would quite naturally fall into the trap, but a years hard experience has taught me to follow my instincts and create a brochure which is unlike any other.

By taking the good points of other brochures, while making a statement about our brand image throughout I could get 95% of the way there, but there were a few big calls I had to make.

1. To put in the original drawings to replace the traditional range shots when introducing the ranges



A big call, never done before, but I had this image of Jaguar cars in my head, showing you the design stage and how it was really effective. Room sets still play a big part, but they support rather than lead the brochure.

Reason - its different, they look great and we design all of our products, why not be proud of it?

2.  To make the brochure A5 landscape not the standard A4 portrait



Again, a big call, but with all these big brochures hanging around people can neither carry them easily or tell them apart! A4 is an unnatural size for a picture, so why squash it upwards to fill space.. with A5 landscape we get a compact brochure that easily displays a drawing or a photo.

Reason - its different, they look great, they are user friendly and they fit in a handbag

3. To take the prices out of the brochure



With all the havoc of re-prints due to VAT changes there was a reason to do this, but more subtly, I think pricing up products throughout cheapens the brochure. People are shopping around more than ever, so they are not going to expect to pay the RRP in any case!

Reason - its different, it looks more up market and it allows the customer to dream

4. Less is more



If you open a competitor brochure, the first thing that hits you is a page of text.. we open with two blank white pages and a quote from apple founder Steve Jobs:

"The difference between leaders and followers is innovation"

Reason - it sets the tone for the whole brochure in one sentence and uses Apple's brand image to stimulate a correlation to ours. A cheat to get the gut instinct reaction we are looking for.

All in all, the new brochure is stunning, it may have driven me crazy over the past 6 months but its exactly what I wanted it to be.. a statement of intent that we are different.. and a true reflection of our brand.. so please request one and give me your feedback.. I will be starting the next one soon enough!




Tuesday 8 February 2011

A slight change of tactics

Now as many of you may well know, the blog until now was written by Mr Andy McGuire, apprentice to Will, giving you an insiders view of www.dovcor.com.

After many consultations with Pr and marketing, it has been decided to make this blog more useful to you the customer, by way of introducing you to the bathroom market itself, some developments, news stories and in general give you a commentary on the industry as a whole.

Now while Andy is well versed in the skills of writing, it has also been decided that Will should write the blog, as the man behind dovcor and writer of the "Entrepreneur of the North" blog.

So here I am... hello!

Now in coming weeks I will endeavor to open up a world of possibilities and inspire you to spend that little bit more on your bathroom, to LOVE your bathroom and then I will not only tell you how we can help you, but in the interests of fairness I will show you how our competitors can help you as well.

So to kick things off I would like to draw your attention this week to our new brochure, please do send in requests to be sent one, as it has taken me a very long time to complete (6 months in fact!) so I would very much appreciate some one having a look at it from time to time.

Now you will notice we have put some of the concept sketches in this version. As we design and manufacture all our own products, world exclusive products in fact, we were frustrated that the first brochure did not show off our capabilities or flair for design. So this time round these have been included, they not only help set our brochure apart as unique as you wont see sketches in any other brochure, but they help create a story to our products as well. Hopefully you will get a sense of the dedication and love that goes into making our products just that little bit better.



You will also notice a slight change from the old brochure in that we have shifted the ranges around to make room for our new stunning showpiece Oena, made with our very own exclusive Chateau Oak colour that even the Italians didn't have. We actually exported it to Italy just for the contruction of this range!




The range itself is based on an s-shape "wave" curve, which can be seen in both the bathroom vanity units and the bath (note the s-shape wooden bath panel!). The panel itself was technically impossible to make anywhere in the world before we designed the tooling to do it, so for us we feel this range represents a real step forward and wanted to show this by making it the first thing you see in the brochure.



If we can keep making ground breaking ranges like this then maybe we will take the bathroom world by storm!