Rebranding Ian Dunn woodwork & Design

40 years, over 500 kitchens completed and more cabinetry projects than we can count. This has been Ian Dunn Woodwork & Design’s journey since our Director Ian Dunn set up the company back in 1981. A lifetime of client referrals and interactions and two workshop spaces later, we arrived at a point where we had to re-evaluate how we are portraying ourselves in this new digital era, and how we are trying to captivate a newer generation of clients.
Here are some of the changes we have been developing in the background, whilst working on some exciting new projects.

Branding

The first step into building a renewed image was to focus on our branding. We redesigned the logo and favicon, as well as our leaflets, communication to clients (estimate designs for example), and our portfolio.
The goal was to have a consistent brand image, always with the same imagery and structure, as well as the same colour palette, textures and typography on all of our promotional materials.

Full branding board

Logo placement

Marketing and Social Media

The second step was to focus on our marketing and social media platforms. We have always understood the value of putting ourselves in front of the right clientele, in the right way. In the past we have tried advertising through more traditional methods such as magazines but in recent years we invested more in online visibility, building a strong presence on platforms like Houzz and Instagram.
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With the pandemic hitting in 2020, it was more pressing than ever to maintain a strong online presence. We saw this as an opportunity to reset the social media platforms we had, this mainly being our Website, Pinterest and Instagram. Additionally, we also created new pages on Linkedin and Facebook. Moreover, having invested time into producing high quality resolution photography, organising photoshoots of completed projects, as well as of our Work-in-Progress at our workshop, this has solidified our online presence with good visual content.

New website, hand-out brochures, social media and stationary

Our Workshop and Showroom

Our office in East Dulwich, South London is combined with the downstairs Workshop where our talented team of cabinet makers works and upstairs, where we have our showroom and design team.
​Downstairs, we took this year to invest some time in training a newer generation of Cabinet Making apprentices. This art is slowly dying, as there aren’t many schools that teach it and a lot of machines now tend to substitute manual labor. We took it upon ourselves to give back to the industry by teaching our new team members and, at the same time, reinforcing our strong and capable team.
Upstairs, we are currently working on revamping our showroom, re-organising our samples and partners’ brochures to make sure we have a pleasant space to host client meetings.

The studio upstairs, and the workshop downstairs

Our team

With training new apprentices, and with the demand of projects we had in the last year, we also had the necessity to increase our team. We are now a solid team of 14, including designers, marketing executives, cabinet makers, sprayers and fitters. This has helped us build a solid foundation on all fronts of work, making sure we are providing a better service overall, from the moment we get inquiries, to doing the projects and planning photoshoots after the projects and sharing them on our social media.


Conclusion

It has been a year of changes at IDW&D, all with one goal in mind: to make sure we used our time wisely during the pandemic. From spending some time rebranding our image, to building strong online connections within our sector, and providing a better client experience to our new inquiries.
There is still more work to go, as we keep learning and growing, but we are proud of our accomplishments across a difficult year and we can already see the positive effects all this work is having on our most recent inquiries from new clients.


Image Credits: Sofia Gameiro Inacio
​Keywords: Kitchen Design, Interior Design, Kitchen Appliances, Appliances, Kitchen Renovation, Industrial Spaces, Branding, Rebranding, Marketing, Social Media,  London, Interior Design Renovation, Design Process, Materials, Kitchen Design Ideas, Modern Kitchen Design, Kitchen Worktop, Kitchen Island, Cabinet Making, Bespoke Kitchen