A better builders' warehouse built from the ground up

The BUILT/ team that had predated me focussed too heavily on technology. This led to the wrong assumptions and a lack of customer understanding. And even though they had commissioned customer research, providing personas, they felt insulting and outrightly wrong based on their vision.

My first job was to understand the overall customer, employee, and user experiences, their journeys, pains, needs, and desired outcomes. Through a series of interviews with with potential customers, HR managers, shop floor workers, and business leaders across different sectors, it became painfully clear when looking at their behaviours, cultures, physical space, and digital tools, that the deeper and more personal understanding was required to deliver against BUILT/'s vision.

I ran research studies, developed journey maps, and understood their jobs to be done, leading to personas for customers and employees, and storyboards visualising the experiences required to deliver a modern day builders merchant. This helped us prioritise touchpoints and settle on the technology required.

The initial brand BUILT/ had felt slow and cumbersome. It was designed around traditional thinking and visual cues from a brick. It needed to evolve to help convey the experience we wanted to deliver.

A partner agency was commissioned to evolve the brand. They repositioned the brand from a 'builders merchant; a place that sells stuff as a traditional merchant with occasional, low loyalty' to 'on-demand building supplies; an efficient experience hub that partners in your build, resulting in regular, high loyalty.'

What was provided was a modern identity and basic service propositions; however, it wasn't enough to use as a brand. So it was down to me to expand the brand and its service propositions, ensuring it was scalable across touchpoints and journeys. This included style guides, a modular design system, and testing rigorously with customers.

The aim was to create a unique retail design that promoted rapid walk-in purchases, reduced the need for customer parking, and promoted a breadth of product types (small stores and heavy side), whilst enabling an easier employee experience picking and packing products.

I conducted extensive research and created many wireframes, physical cardboard cut-out prototypes, and commissioned a 3D, 1:1 scale VR experience to ensure the retail experience would work. Collaborating with the Operations Manager, the retail layout maximised product placement in a smaller space, resulting in a super-efficient, user-friendly branch format. Similar to the design system, we ensured that the retail format was modular, meaning that any noticeable amendments to the store could be made with haste and accuracy. Colour-coded parking bays, automatic number plate recognition technology, and digital displays allowed us to identify, distribute, and serve customers unlike any experiences ever seen. The devil was in the detail and simplicity was key.

Compared to traditional trade counters and yards, BUILT/’s new retail design improved customer experience, promoting rapid purchases and increasing efficiency. But not only that, the cost to serve customers was dramatically reduced by the new format alongside an optimised employee experience boasting greater efficiency.

A user experience isn't just digital. It's physical, too. Powered by this belief, it meant that details mattered more now than ever. I had to focus on how each touchpoint integrated and supported each other, BUILT/'s customers and its employees.

With the rebrand / brand development in place, I revisited the experiences and journeys, to confirm all service and tech touchpoints. As a group, we created user stories across the physical and digital and using my research insights, revelations were confronted, such as health and safety and the need for integrating Hi Vis into employee clothing.

Merchandise and tech were considered together, their fundamentals, how they interact and aid in the experiences of customers and employees. Certain devices such as the kiosks were designed around ergonomics and with a view on improving peoples’ lives. When it came to the customer app and ecommerce website, I identified where customisations to the out-of-the-box solution were required so that business needs could be met. User flows, wireframes, and final designs were crafted for all of this.

When it came to launching and going to market, BUILT/ had a strategy that required a breadth of collateral. I designed print marketing materials, setup email automation and templates, and even a catalogue (which originally wasn't deemed necessary until new customer insights post-launch came to light).

BUILT/ had a culture of experimentation. And this was good because either I didn't get everything right or didn't stress the importance of certain decision strongly enough (something many years later I don't make the mistake with again). But with the culture of experimentation, it meant the team were open to constant iteration and trying new things, if they were backed by evidence and highly likely to move the needle.

In a short amount of time, the small stores, checkout flow, home page, and bay designs were all updated leading to greater spend, efficiency, and customer retention.