STUDIO C BRAND DEVELOPMENT
A school supplies manufacturing company locked in a commodity category reinvents itself into a fashion-forward lifestyle brand.
Bringing the brand to life, Porter developed the brand storytelling and messaging platform, designed a new brand identity system, and provided design and creative direction to the marketing team to develop a new e-commerce website, new retail packaging and merchandising programs for the mass market retail channel.
The new brand was introduced to retail in early 2014, Studio C is now poised to make its mark on the world one fashionable product at a time.
In a category dominated by conformity and the status quo, Carolina Pad created a new brand called STUDIO C. Working together with executive management in a series of strategic workshops, we helped the management team position this new brand as a lifestyle brand targeted to a new generation of consumers who use laptops and mobile devices in school.
Carolina Pad, founded in 1945, is a manufacturer of paper products, school supplies, laptop cases and mobile device covers. Its core products are sold through national variety stores, dollar stores and mass retail outlets like Kmart, Target, and WalMart.
Facing increased price competition from foreign suppliers and domestic name brands, the category had become a commodity with little differentiation in product offerings. Recognizing this challenge to its profitability and viability as a competitor, Carolina Pad began to vigorously differentiate its products through fashion forward designs in the paper products category.
With the proliferation of digital devices and the shrinking market for paper products, Carolina Pad management recognized their business was fading away fast and that a new evolution of products was critical to their future success.