The Client's Challenge
In 2018, when embarking on their first showroom outside Italy, exceptional textile brand, Sahrai, needed to repackage their signature service and Milanese style to appeal to a British audience. Led by five generations of the same family over nearly two centuries, Sahrai produces handcrafted rugs that combine artisan craftsmanship with the brand values of quality, beauty and luxury.

While Sahrai knew that the brand needed refreshing to appeal to their expanded market, the owners were keen to retain the heritage of the existing label. With this in mind, the brand messaging became even more important when considering how to engage a varied target demographic.

Our Approach
We began our brand development process by guiding Sahrai’s owners through a series of workshops to discover the purpose behind the family legacy. Previous marketing materials had focused so heavily on the quality of the product that the opportunity for creating a real emotive connection with the audience had been limited.

With the brand’s history rooted in the Silk Road, and more recent generations of Sahrai having made Milan their home, hospitality is key to the in-person Sahrai experience. When visiting the Sahrai showroom, your personal experience is their number one priority. Amidst the ethos of luxury, Sahrai’s values about how their customers should be treated are strongly based on culture and tradition.

Although these elements of culture and tradition are central to the Sahrai experience, it hadn’t been a key message for the brand. Our initial Immersion process helped the Sahrai team understand that the success of their brand relied on more than the excellence of their products; it was underpinned by the human story behind the company. The discovery process revealed the captivating story of Sahrai’s origins in a Tehrani bazaar and the founders’ fascinating travels, spreading Persian culture across Europe through their woven art.

This story became the key to translating the ceremony of Sahrai’s customer-centred approach for a new audience. The service in-store buyers experience is steeped in a Persian culture that celebrates art, poetry and hospitality, a prominent feature of Sahrai’s brand story. We highlighted this brand history via Sahrai’s website, including a video communicating Sahrai’s passion for its modern design process and traditional weaving methods that respect their heritage. The video helped customers to understand why every flawless piece takes months to produce, and to appreciate the skill that makes every product gallery-worthy.

Sahrai’s website also required a user-experience overhaul to meet the high expectations of its tastemaker clientele. Following a thorough UI/UX process, Jérrard Wayne redesigned the website to align with the seamless service experienced by showroom customers. The new design was supplemented with a considered SEO strategy and additional copy to highlight the sustainable manufacturing processes that Sahrai implement to modernise their family traditions.

To further emphasise the experience of the Sahrai showroom, we proposed an augmented reality app that would allow customers to position 3D-rendered images of Sahrai rugs in any living space. The app concept was a fresh take on the experience of a merchant visiting your home with a tailored selection of priceless treasures. It was intended to help customers visualise the transformational quality of Sahrai pieces and give advocates of the brand an innovative way to illustrate the grandeur of Sahrai products in real time. We also developed a content-marketing strategy to support the refinement of Sahrai’s website and create an online extension of Sahrai’s showrooms.

The Outcome
Our user-friendly approach helped customers understand the care and dedication that goes into making each hand-woven rug and allowed them to invite the culture of 1830s Persia into their own homes with every purchase.