I never thought I would be so excited to show the world our new look but, as we found, this wasn’t just a new logo and a quick spruce up of our design.

Let me take you back to the end of 2021 (which feels like a very long time ago now). We were still sitting in the pandemic, which was exactly why we decided to make the decision to re-look at our whole offering.

One of our clients actually recommended a brand and marketing agency that they use; called Brand Elect (BE), and it was here our new journey started. From the moment, we met with BE, we realised this was going to be an interesting adventure. I would go as far as to say the whole project has been very therapeutic, and it’s really helped us fall in love with our business all over again. BE really wanted to make more of the Wainwright story, and this meant going right back to the very beginning of when we were first established. It’s funny really, it’s only when you look back that you really understand how far we’ve come as a business. I guess we all fall in to this trap from time to time, but when you take your head out of the ‘day to day’, it’s actually a very rewarding feeling.

The brief from Brand Elect was very simple; “we need to build a brand that demonstrates our traditional ‘customer centric’ values” – from here, our new ‘Wainwright Direct’ story was formed. We knew the challenge ahead of us, especially when you consider most of our competition are well-known building supplies brands (with much larger marketing spends at their disposal). But as we have learned along the way, our competitors perceived corporate greatness is probably our best opportunity. You see, Wainwright Direct have always had a very bespoke offering to our clients. We knew from the outset that our new brand would not have a catalogue style website – In our experience, we’re finding that our growing customer base requires more than the ability to buy something online. In fact, when you consider the climate of material shortages and
rising prices, we’ve started to see a seismic shift in buyer behaviour.

Our ability to find materials when most people are out of stock, is a wonderful example of ‘customer centricity’. The fact that customers can secure a number of different building products from one single company like ours is beginning to resonate with our audiences. I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised about the way people are doing business these days. We’ve noticed a lot more people are more comfortable actually picking up the phone and speaking to a real person, and it’s entirely logical that ‘post pandemic’, a lot of people are more inclined to communicate more collaboratively.

In total, we spent 3 to 4 months working on a new brand, and I was quite surprised how comprehensive BE were in creating our new look and feel – their ‘ground up’ approach makes sense to me now, and I can’t help reflecting on the irony of ‘building on solid foundations’ (something the entire construction industry professes each and every day).

So, fast forward to today, the launch of our new brand & website. I fondly remember the business I first worked at as a young man, which is why I’m so very proud to say that today Wainwright Direct is ready to take on the world!