Our cus­tomer SWISS KRONO is plan­ning to con­quer the B2C market with a new brand and is con­stant­ly faced with the chal­lenge of over­com­ing, or rather break­ing down, prej­u­dices against lam­i­nate. Lam­i­nate is not plas­tic and many con­sumers do not realise this.

The claim from Gen Y and Gen Z

The goal is clear­ly for­mu­lat­ed: the devel­op­ment of a high-qual­i­ty, yet cost-effec­tive wooden floor cov­er­ing, cus­tomised for a young target group within a new cat­e­go­ry: Hybrid Resilient Floor­ing. ‘Hybrid’ because it com­bines sev­er­al func­tions of famil­iar floor cov­er­ings such as vinyl or lam­i­nate. And ‘Resilient’ because this floor­ing is not only equipped with inno­v­a­tive water­proof technology, but is also scratch-resis­tant. A real all-rounder!

How do you define new, dis­rup­tive brands?

As the floor­ing market is very cau­tious in terms of naming and design, we were able to start here. But the changes in con­sumer behav­iour also pro­vide a very good oppor­tu­ni­ty to rethink the indus­try. We start­ed the rev­o­lu­tion by not only devel­op­ing a unique name and a fresh design, but also by shift­ing the focus from the price to com­mu­ni­cat­ing the value of the prod­uct and its sus­tain­able raw mate­r­i­al.

The estab­lish­ment of a new cat­e­go­ry (sim­i­lar to what Oatly did for milk) nat­u­ral­ly leads to a visual trans­for­ma­tion. If you’re not brave here, you can’t even think about new cat­e­gories. So the colour YELLOW became a symbol of change, both inside and out.

Log­i­cal­ly, we have also com­plete­ly turned communication on its head, or rather, sim­pli­fied it. Stories that only the floor can tell are at the centre. We devel­oped effec­tive inter­nal and exter­nal communication and sales con­cepts to direct­ly involve the entire team and cus­tomers. Accom­pa­nied by a cus­tomised social media strat­e­gy includ­ing What­sApp cam­paigns, a direct line to the cus­tomers was estab­lished.

The launch in Jan­u­ary 2024 was a resound­ing suc­cess and we are all work­ing togeth­er to ensure that it is not a one-off. Thanks to the dis­rup­tive approach and the close and inspir­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with SWISS KRONO, there are many more excit­ing devel­op­ments to come.