Tianu is a luxury furniture store that is based in Mumbai and ships across India. It is a unique, independent design store, which produces and retails premium quality, contemporary furniture. They are known for their core lines of sofas, arm chairs, dining sets and beds, which use contemporary forms to celebrate the natural warmth and beauty of teak wood. Comfort and adaptability to multiple spaces are key criteria of their designs.
They had a very luxurious experience offline but their online properties including website and social media did not reflect the luxury feel.
Their competitors had an active and engaging social media strategy.
Their store is very experiential whereas their online experience did not portray that personalised service and attention to detail. They did not have an e-commerce website either.
As a result, they weren’t getting sales from across India. Tianu’s catchment area was limited to South Bombay & some architects from Pune, Hyderabad & Gujarat.
We designed and developed an e-commerce portal for Tianu that turned the offline business into a Digital First Online Business. As a result, Tianu is now a part of the digital economy.
We moved from taking photographs to making 3D renders. These renders now allow customers to pick their choice of fabric and see how it would look on the finished product. We created an online experience that mirrored the experience someone would have at their offline store - one that expressed the luxury, attention to detail, and customisations that are offered in-store.
We moved from taking photographs to making 3D renders. These renders now allow customers to pick their choice of fabric and see how it would look on the finished product. We created an online experience that mirrored the experience someone would have at their offline store - one that expressed the luxury, attention to detail, and customisations that are offered in-store.
We also established an online social media presence and started engaging with people on Instagram before the website was even up, to test the strategy of people buying furniture by just looking it online, something we wanted to test before investing on an e-commerce portal.
The bounding box reduced legibility of ‘tianu’ across different platforms. Logo did not reflect the minimal and luxury elements of the brand that is Tianu.
We changed their creative direction, their logo and brand identity. We completely changed the brand narrative to better reflect their values. We talked about Tianu as facilitating energy flow. Slow living and wellness. Live Well. Live Tianu.
A new identity was designed to match the brand personality. The minimal design and neutral variations of the logo allow it to be used across platforms without losing its legibility.
Various colour combinations, pulled from Tianu’s signature Ikat designs, were also tested. This elegant dusty pink variation was chosen for social media platforms
Even during the cover pandemic, when people aren’t investing in high ticket items such as furniture, and real estate is down, Tianu still has a steady stream of orders and a backlog in production.
The website has managed to increase revenue by 400%. This has allowed them to hire more designers in-house, to increase their production unit. Everything they do is handcrafted and designed in-house.
It has also enabled them to have a conversation with their clients and other crafters of furniture and creators of interiors and architects. There is now a very healthy conversation between architects and Tianu.
Founder, Tianu Furniture
Ritu David of The Data Duck has been working with us for a little over a year now. We are boutique design house engaged in designing, manufacturing and retailing residential furniture. I was introduced to Ritu through a common acquaintance and first met her at my showroom. I remember her first words when she entered my store - “You guys are a hidden gem and the world needs to know about you.” And she has lived by that.
She started with managing our social media. After much discussion, we agreed that while we will maintain a presence on Facebook, Instagram was where we would put in effort. At the time we had a few hundred followers maybe. Today, all thanks to her, we have a community of over 5000 followers. We have had clients that have discovered us on Instagram come in from Hyderabad, Pune and even as far as Delhi to order furniture for their homes.
It is important to understand here that for a design house it is truly hard to outsource social media. Design thinking and ethos is so personal. You cannot teach it to anyone. But Ritu has a way of getting inside your head, understanding your thinking and managing social media entirely independently. She is like having a business partner, who entirely takes care of a key aspect, allowing us to focus on our core competence.
She then convinced us, and rightly so, that we needed an e-commerce platform to reach out to the rest of the country. Designing and developing the website was the second assignment we hired Ritu for. I have to say that she has a very keen understanding of web design. And despite being designers ourselves, we find her web aesthetic clearly superior.
But again, it’s important to point out that at every stage she has handheld us and fulfilled a role akin to a partner. She works like we are friends, like the business is her own and she goes that extra mile to get it right. Worth a mention here that she was convinced that our logo needed redesigning. While we agreed, we were not keen to take on that additional spend at the time. But given she was completely convinced on the need for change, she went ahead and redesigned it anyway. And simply said “Its necessary for the new website and don’t worry, we won’t charge you for it!!!”
Overall, I am grateful for having been introduced to Ritu. Her deep involvement combined with her knowledge and competence are an absolute pleasure. She has been a huge asset to Tianu.
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