This Autumn sees the launch of the first phase of our shiny new website, the final step in a year long rebrand across our seven shops’ interiors and exteriors, our signage, our bags and our packaging. It’s our 35th birthday present to ourselves – our equivalent of botox.
The new look is clean, bright, contemporary, quirky, functional and full of fun … just like us, which is the brief that our talented website designers worked to.
“The scope of the project was very large,” they said, ”incorporating and streamlining many of their mail order processes, but we’re very proud of the end result. With Fudge Kitchen’s outstanding product range and David King’s mouth-watering photography, our job of showing it off to customers was a breeze.”
And using it is an equal breeze: brilliantly interactive, with easy e-commerce across our full range and new Build-a-Box pages for our Drinking Fudge, Slab Fudge and Butter Fudge lines. Just choose your box and your flavours and get dragging and clicking your way to a bespoke collection of treats. Demand for personalising, particularly in the gift market, is so strong that we think we’re on to a winner here. We hope our customers feel the same. And, for the record … no one will be judging you on that entire box filled with Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl.
A picture tells a thousand words, of course, and that’s where our Canterbury photographer David King came in. But when those words are hand made, premium, all-natural indulgence, and your model is a slab of fudge, it’s not so easy. Confectionery, however incredible, doesn’t react to “Look straight into the camera and ooze ‘gorgeous’”!
We have a long history with David, however – his business was started with the help of our MD Sian’s father, Tonie Holt, and we have also worked with him on our packaging photography. It is his incredible attention to detail, his mastery of light and his ability to – yes – communicate the inner ‘gorgeous’ of a piece of fudge, that makes him such a find; and makes our new website a lesson in Confectionery Porn. Again … we won’t judge you …
As Digital Marketing Manager, Kira Harris, explains, “Getting just-the-right image of a product which you cannot touch or taste, yet gets the viewer as close to the ‘experience’ of the product, is integral to displaying premium confectionery in a two dimensional space.” Job most definitely done.
But it doesn’t end there. We have big plans for our Lovely New Website, including bringing Click & Collect functionality to the website and a Fudge Club, across a range of subscription packages, for members to get their hands on the newest flavours every month, and for the perfect gift for the confectionery cognoscenti. Longer term plans includea “Friends of Fudge Kitchen” page, celebrating the stories and products of some of the incredible producers that we work with. You know who you are out there!
Because, above all else, our Lovely New Website is a meeting point, celebrating the Fudge Kitchen family across eight cities, our full range of products in all its glory, our proud commitment to the integrity of our products and production processes; and our loyal and hugely valued customers.
