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“We always like to think about the next 100 years, and we feel the digital space is going to be that lever to propel us forward.”
— Mike Friedberg, Director of Ecommerce, Hinkley
When consumers choose lighting decor for their home, they largely focus on style and price and not the brand name. But Hinkley, a 100-year-old lighting company, is trying to change this with a digital-first strategy that’s helping it develop a closer connection with customers.
Mike Friedberg, Hinkley’s ecommerce director, joined a recent episode of the “Unpacking the Digital Shelf” podcast, “Building Brand Power in Your Category,” to share how the company has developed and advanced digital customer experience management and the lessons other companies in brand-agnostic categories can draw from it to stand out from competitors and win on the digital shelf.
Hinkley invested in digital early on, even before the pandemic. Friedberg says this was necessary because while the company was well-known in the brick-and-mortar space, it didn’t have as much brand recognition online.
“Brand is often fourth [in consumers’ minds]. When you think about these big, beautiful fixtures in your home, how often can you remember what brand they are unless you're completely vested in the category?” Friedberg says. “We want to make sure that we get recognized as the number one brand when the consumer is in that fourth filter, if you will, for picking their products, so ecommerce is very important for our brand to succeed.”
“We always like to think about the next 100 years, and we feel the digital space is going to be that lever to propel us forward,” he adds.
Hinkley has made several internal changes to build its digital operations and improve digital customer experience management.
The company expanded its digital team from only two to eight people, with a focus on sales, content merchandising, and operations. Rather than let its retail partners merchandise and enhance SKUs on its behalf and shape its brand presence online, Hinkley gave these responsibilities to its digital team.
The company also dropships most of its orders, so customer care and effective inventory management are major priorities. Hinkley’s catalog includes as many as 4,000 SKUs with varying styles and designs. It releases at least 200 new products every six months and has to update its content and merchandising for these SKUs.
Friedberg says Hinkley's digital team initially faced the challenge of creating a unique value proposition (UVP) for each of these new SKUs. Hinkley forged a closer relationship with its retail partners and made a significant investment in photography and product content to cultivate this value proposition.
Hinkley depends on its retail partners to drive demand for its products, so, “As far as what the future holds, the strategy at large is still to win based on our partners’ playbooks,” Friedberg says.
From an operational standpoint, Hinkley employs a very partner-specific digital strategy organized by account and category.
“What we're trying to establish is long-term relationships — long-term partnerships, mutually profitable partnerships with our key accounts. If they don't exist, we don't exist quite frankly, and vice versa, so we're looking for long-term wins,” Friedberg says. “Everything — advertising, media spend, operational side — they're all profit centers on a [profit and loss statement] P&L. We want to make sure that we're checking all those boxes, not just for us, but for our partners, as well.”
Hinkley also works with its retail partners to deliver an omnichannel experience. Hinkley’s internal data indicates its consumer base often browses its products online and then makes their final purchase in store.
Friedberg says the company tries to ensure its products are well-merchandised across channels. For example, many of its SKUs aren’t in physical showrooms. Hinkley has remedied this by partnering with brick-and-mortar retailers to create an endless aisle where in-store customers can browse SKUs online on big-screen TV terminals.
Unlike online shopping, store associates are available in person to help shoppers choose the best product for their home design needs.
“Your titles need to be correct. Your data needs to be correct. Your photography needs to capture their attention, and obviously, you want to generate reviews,” Friedberg says. “It's always nice to have the products in stock as well. So we make sure that we pay keen attention to our accounts and our customers that have these omnichannel opportunities, because we feel like we're winning on both sides, and that creates a good partnership.”
Hinkley heavily invests in lifestyle photography and refrains from using computer-generated imagery (CGI). Instead, the company hires professional photographers who shoot on location. This gives customers more insight into the length, width, height, look, and feel of each product.
In the past, these images were mostly created for print advertising, but Hinkley now uses these images to showcase its SKUs online and give consumers enough details to make an informed buying decision.
“The reason we continue to invest, especially in photography, is that it resonates more often than not. The feedback we've received from customers over time is, ‘We've seen your photos. We've seen your pictures. We know what your product looks like or your brand. We know of your brand because of your photography,’” Friedberg says.
Hinkley also has invested in product reviews on its partners’ websites and its own, even though it doesn’t yet have a direct-to-consumer (D2C) channel.
“We've been very pleased with the number of reviews and the breadth of the SKUs we've been able to generate reviews on,” Friedberg says. “We try to syndicate that out to our channel partners, as well, so that's been going well. That's huge, especially in today's world where it feels like a lot of people can't make a decision for themselves, but they're willing to listen to a bunch of folks they've never met before.”
Hinkley demonstrates that even when your company is in a brand-agnostic category where retailers act as a layer in between you and the consumer, it’s possible to create compelling product content that helps customers more easily identify your brand.
Though white labels are the norm in Hinkley’s category, its digital customer experience management strategy enables the company to set itself apart from other lighting brands.
From delivering better customer care and best-in-class photography to optimized product content and reviews, Hinkley engages customers with a multi-faceted approach. Even if your brand isn’t in the lighting industry, these same tactics may help you future-proof your business.
“For the next 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, it's hard to predict what's going to happen, especially in decorative lighting, but we're going to continue setting forth on this path forward to make sure we continue to build our brand.” — Mike Friedberg, Director of Ecommerce, Hinkley
“We will continue to invest in on-trend styles and designs and affordable price points to make sure that when someone is remodeling their home — whether it's their first home, their second home, or their 10th home — they have the statement piece they can speak to and hopefully say, ‘This is my Hinkley fixture that I chose, and this was why.’"
To hear more of Friedberg’s insights on digital customer experience management, listen to the full episode.
