Gemini Worktops Branding and Communications

Following the next generation of ownership and adjustment of how the business is run, J Rotherham’s - a well known and respected stone masons with nearly 100 years of history in the genre was looking to rebuild and specialise their kitchen worktops company.

Matthew Rotherham invited Boxhead to help them build a new brand that was classy and elegant, yet affordable and friendly with a focus on their USP of being a start-to-finish company, uniquely working with each project from the very outset of design and planning to the wrapping up, cleaning and aftercare of some of the most beautiful quartz and stone worktops to be found.

Visual Identity

The business already had a great head start from its foundations as J Rotherhams and was raring to go, so needed to build out a new visual identity quickly. We launched with three concepts to follow the already chosen name and brief of a ‘classy, yet affordable and unfussy style’ identity. Via simple workshops and concept reviews, it was clear a wordmark would work best, as the identity could be easily seen and understood in a busy, competitive market.

The challenge was to find the perfect balance of not being too conceptual or ‘expensive’ vs alternatively looking cheap or boring. The identity needed to simply highlight the beautiful colours and textures in the stone, while representing the fantastic work undertaken to create the perfect kitchen worktops. We worked with the typeface ‘National’ by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry in New Zealand.

“National is a deceptively simple sans serif with subtle details that give it a distinctive — but not distracting — personality. ... National’s details are drawn from the era of Akzidenz Grotesk, giving it a humble, workmanlike character with an agreeable tone of voice. While National travels through, and touches on, a lot of historical material, it is designed to thrive in our modern typographic climate.” - Kris Sowersby

The simple and elegant wordmark framed the brilliant workmanship and stone characteristics only available from Gemini Worktops.

Counter v2 Capri White Slab quotation topdown

As the brand launched and saw immediate growth, we highlighted a few areas of the customer experience that could do with a re-think.

How a brand makes a customer feel can come across in so many ways, so each and every interaction should be planned and well thought through. One of the first and last elements in this journey are the really popular sample packs and aftercare packs.

The sample packs contain three small slabs of stone, chosen by the customer. Previously these were sent in basic white corrugated boxes and sealed with packing tape - not a great start for an introduction to company you could potentially be spending a lot of hard-earned money with!

So with an emphasis on being much more eco-friendly, we updated the packaging to be hand screen-printed kraft card boxes with a simple locking system and an eco-friendly sticker, all in the new brand style, with a little compliments slip and insert to say hello. Clean, efficient and brand-building.

We also re-worked the stickers on the slabs as well, updating the branding and including the new Trustpilot score so that every potential customer had a solid understanding of the quality every Gemini worktop comes with.

Following the successful launch of the sample packs, we also created an aftercare pack, including illustrated guides and tools to keep their worktops as good as new for years to come.

Marketing Makeovers

The team at Gemini had asked us to initially re-work some of their seasonal campaigns garnering some good success, but we knew the brand definitely needed to try and engage their audience more. We saw an opportunity for them to share their work through multiple platforms, using User-Generated Content - showing that their beautiful stoneware really was all it’s cracked up to be and that the customers can vouch for it! We quickly helped them grab new audiences on multiple platforms from Instagram to Pinterest, that then lead to continued engagement and ultimately better sales. We’d created a solid marketing funnel, helping the business and customers find the solution they need and get the ball rolling on their new kitchen.

One of the initial perceived challenges to Gemini, was that it doesn’t do a ‘whole kitchen’ fit, just the worktops. With a lot of their main competitors being well known ‘full’ kitchen outfitters, we wanted to find a way to express the benefits of Gemini remaining focussed on providing the best worktops, which didn’t take long to fathom. Grand Designs were featuring a self-build dream home by Olaf Mason and Fritha Vincent who, due to the circumstances of their build, needed a bespoke kitchen. Olaf being a master carpenter set about creating the beautifully unique kitchen and used Gemini to fit their brand new worktops.

Rather than just highlighting the new worktops as a simple social media piece, we brought the whole project into scope on Gemini’s new Journal page - under the title ‘Kitchen Stories’. Interviewing Olaf about his decision and experience building the kitchen opened up the possibility for all other people looking to re-do their kitchen, to create their own unique ‘heart of the home’ instead of another ‘flat-pack, pre-made’ kitchen anyone else could pick up. Follow this with a ‘Create the Look’ call to action, highlighting the worktop colours used in the build and the Gemini team were off to a great start. There’s now loads of opportunities to expand the idea and capture unique and desirable ideas from other people re-building their kitchens (using the simple tool of ‘before & after’ photos), as well as influencers and designers in the public eye that will help inspire their audience (and beyond) to be bold, add their mark and really make their kitchen a heart of their home using Gemini’s incredible offerings and team of experts.