Vanessa Scopino

The challenge: Wolfers is a high end lighting store in the greater Boston area. The nature of their business ranges from sales of single fixtures or lamps to customers requiring lighting solutions for whole projects. In the former type of engagement, Wolfers' associates take on a sheer sales capacity (what do I need to do to get you into this chandelier?). 

In the latter, they often find themselves working with a customer alongside their electrician, contractor or interior designer in a consultant role. To be sure, they're making (sometimes huge) sales at this level, but they feel this "purveyor of solutions in lighting expertise" role is their sweet spot. 

As such, they approached Almighty to help better get that role across to their customers as their primary offering. Bearing in mind the fact that their fixture business couldn't disappear completely (lamp markups are a huge profit driver, and a good offering for interior designers who come in), I lead a team that employed several research methods to gain a better understanding of the business, its customers and the types of engagement the team there wanted to nurture. 

Methodology: 

• Key client interviews
• Store manager and salespeople interviews
• Interviews with current "lighting solution" trade partners: an architect and an interior designer
• "Power" end user interview (conducted with someone who had worked with Wolfers 25+ times)
• Store observation during busy and slow sales periods
• Online end user survey
• Competitive audit
• External situation analysis (what's going on in the world that might affect a transaction?)
• Uncertainty analysis (What uncontrollable elements could affect Wolfers' business? ex: Alaska-style midnight sun all year round in Massachusetts)
• Failure analysis (Where does a transaction with Wolfers fail?)
• Myth and assumption analysis (What myths do Wolfers associates and their customers hold to be true?)

From all of the raw data we collected, we were able to synthesize and make some actionable organizational recommendations to the Wolfers team. Of these, they were able to identify some priorities as far as what to tackle first. With these in mind, we briefed our internal Creative, Media and Technology teams, for whom we then played a consultatory/ facilitating role as they work to ideate and rapidly prototype ideas to solve for the priorities identified. You can view the full report here. 

My role: 

• Research planning with Wolfers team 
• Lead research methodology listed above
• Synthesized findings into actionable business opportunities

The team: 

• Lucia Corso: Content strategist and co-researcher
• Ian Fitzpatrick: Director of strategy and Partner
• RJ Evans: Creative director and Partner