Product:
Fine Hardwood Furniture

Situation:
B2B

Market:
International

Deliverables:
Website Design

The Need
The Gunlocke Company (a division of HON International) is more than one hundred years old, and is internationally recognized as a producer of high-quality wooden office furniture. The company is also known for producing the executive chair of a number of U.S. Presidents.

Gunlocke needed a new website, one that represented them with an air of sophistication. Their new website needed to reflect the company’s reputation for quality and elegance. Positioned as a hi-end company, Gunlocke needed to completely replace their previous website, which failed to convey the quality and elegance of their company products

Challenge
The new Gunlocke website needed to appeal to interior design firms and other creative professionals – these are the people who sell Gunlocke’s products. Making this project especially challenging for  MG Lomb, was the fact that we were replacing another web development firm who had failed to meet Gunlocke's expectations and were released. The firm that MG Lomb replaced had recently been ranked one of the U.S.’s top ten web development firms.

Solution
Create a new website that conveyed sophistication, creativity, easy navigation and user friendly construction. The previous web development firm had presented concepts that (in the client’s words) were overly complex and lacked sophistication. Understanding their approach to be unsatisfactory, MG Lomb first addressed the website’s aesthetics. Gunlocke's brand had recently been updated and provided an excellent foundation from which to begin the design effort. Using Gunlocke's new brand styles guide, MG Lomb approached the redesign with clean, simple and spacious styling. Upon approval of the new look and feel, we next addressed general construction and site navigation. Special attention was assigned to making the new website easy to navigate, and limiting click depth. Once theses issues were resolved development continued and the site was completed. The entire process took just four months.

During development, MG Lomb worked closely with Gunlocke’s visual brand developer to assure that their new brand was correctly applied. Gunlocke's sales team participated during development at weekly critiques and content reviews, to address potential concerns of the customers. Gunlocke's President, and Vice President of Sales & Marketing, also participated to see to it that the new website correctly represented Gunlocke commensurate with their corporate vision.

Progress
Immediately after launching the website, Gunlocke, pleased with the results and proud of MG Lomb's work, entered their new website into the internationally recognized Webby Awards competition.