Designing a digital transformation

Client: Real English | United Kingdom

We were approached by a British distillery, Real English Drinks, to assist them in compiling a relevant, future-focused DTC strategy for their business.

Real English Drinks does contract distilling for brands and has a portfolio of own brand products, which they offer through select UK-retailers and their own channels.

Challenge

The Real English Drinks business model had become dangerously concentrated on just a few successful revenue streams; there was an urgent need to diversify their sources of income and ensure that the future of the business was more sustainable.

Real English Drinks had an existing e-commerce website, but sales through the site were less than ideal and previous projects aimed at reviving the site had all delivered poor results.

What was needed was a new way of thinking about the opportunity in DTC for the brand.

Solution

Our strategic partnership with Real English Drinks happened in the middle of the pandemic, and just after the UK decided to leave the European Union. There was a lot of uncertainty as to what the future would hold for the business and where the opportunities were.

We started the project by conducting a comprehensive horizon scanning exercise - searching for weak signals of change which lead us to draw more accurate conclusions as to how the new Real English brand should be repositioned in a changing marketplace.

Based on the insights generated from the research we worked closely with the directors of Real English designing a new business, brand and marketing strategy to take advantage of the identified gaps in the marketplace.

A thorough audit of the current business was conducted to identify where development prioritisation should be directed and a comprehensive design of the ideal business was created and implemented.