Oliviers & Co.

With 25 years of passion and excellence, Oliviers and Co. is proud to offer the best olive oils in the world. Oliviers & Co. started when a group of photographers began traveling throughout the Mediterranean in search of the olive growing world. Their inspiration manifested into the concept “like wines, olive oil could be tasted and worthy of recognition just as “Grand Crus” were. Oliviers & Co. was founded in Mane, Alpes de Haute Provence where the first orders were by phone initially of just select O&Co. olive oils discovered during O&Co’s maiden voyage throughout the Mediterranean.  Today, Oliviers & Co. operates 52 stores in 12 countries, with a presence in gourmet and fine grocery stores, and exceptional world class restaurants in France and Europe.

Like many European companies, however, Oliviers & Co. was late to the eCommerce game; coupled with limited brand visibility in the United States and limited marketing dollars, Oliviers and Co.’s reputation was not near its acclaim in Europe. While oliviersandco.com made its debut and became the 2nd highest producing door in the United States, without corporate support from Oliviers & Co France, it proved a difficult feat to garner support for a re-positioning and evolving oliviersandco.com to reach its full online producing potential.

At the time of our introduction to Oliviers & Co., we learned that while the website performed decently compared to its European counterparts, given the US’s ascent to buying online, unfortunately, its brand presence had deteriorated and in no way did it parlay the Provencal experience of shopping in one of their boutiques. Additionally, O&Co. had a rich chef’s program that collaborated on products and recipes that were also sold through their physical boutiques, and in 5-star restaurants throughout Europe, and the rich archive of imagery was nowhere to be found on olivierandco.com.

As part of our branding exercise, we started with the logo, which had many variations given its many international franchisees, and we went back to the basics of their very first store in France, creating what would be a ‘metallic’ serif version of the OLIVERS & CO. mark that would elevate the site serving as a global masthead. We then turned to their award-winning product packaging, and from the core color palette which in greens for the O&Co olive oils  and purples, giving a nod to their #1 product, their balsamic vinegar, we incorporated details such as their ‘metallic prints’ in the global footer, their vintage stamps, and ‘physical bottle tags’ for dimensional email sign up forms, all accompanied with hand drawn web-friendly fonts that imbued an old-world sensibility.  

Lastly, we leveraged their rich archive of photography, from the very first captures on their journey of discovery of the European olive groves to the editorial imagery of their world class recipes cultivated from the best European chefs to create a rich digital experience on par with the grand cru of olive oil they brought to the global market.

As with most eCommerce strategies where we subsequently build out transactional digital platforms, oliviersandco.com required a service forward UX that successfully communicated a sensorial product that warranted its premium price point compared to what the American consumer could buy at their regular supermarket. As its USA boutique footprint was sparse compared to its European counterparts, and compounded by the fact that sampling was not a possibility, given stringent batch control in order to protect the olive oils’ freshness, we had to construct the experience, not solely from premium brand positioning, but from education, as to why the Mediterranean was still producing the best olive oil in the world and perhaps the most complex, conveying how an olive oil tasted through an online interface.

To bring Oliviers & Co. to the forefront of the increasingly competitive farm to table movement that had engulfed foodies and regions across the United States, we took a deep dive into the history of Oliviers & Co. We read every book that O&Co. had published, read every recipe, experienced their USA boutiques intimately, tasted every product and benchmarked oliviersandco.com against their online competition, both high-end and mass olive oil purveyors across more than 100+ metrics. 

What resulted was a website that tied the European olive oil producers, putting faces to the olive oil groves, to the select olive oils.  High-end eCommerce photography that showcased the refined labels, with an enhanced zoom feature, so that users could educate themselves as they would in the O&Co. boutique.  Legends that were both informative and sensorial, where we created an iconographic library that represented the tasting notes of the olive oil, adding whimsy to the online experience. Lastly, we advocated for the product with testimonials that were captured in each of their five boutiques.  

And from a performance perspective, we achieved a 4.5% conversion rate (+125% vs. the industry average at that moment0, while growing traffic +36%, following a negative trend and a reduced ‘paid advertising’ budget.  Additionally, their average order size increased +24%, and revenue grew +43%.

Not dissimilar to many luxury and high-end brands who were trying to navigate their positioning on the web, Oliviers & Co. had fallen victim to promotional strategies that cheapened the brand and cut their online margins. One of oliviersandco.com’s greatest assets was its email list.  Unfortunately, as they relied heavily on promotions to almost drive orders exclusively, their email list and web traffic was diminishing.

To reverse this trend, we needed to think of clever ways to grow both traffic and their subscriber list.  We conducted an audit of all email capture points; from their Magento checkout opt-ins to intra-site capture forms, updating error validation, and incorporating best practice source code definition for list segmentation. However, the biggest idea in addition to their boutique POS email capture, was by way of a contest to win a FREE Year of O&Co. olive oil. This allowed for one-time entrants in the contest, where the winner would be pulled quarterly.  The result was an +86% email list increase within the first quarter and established a new precedent in marketing for the European retailer that introduced something aspirational, rather than just broadening their discount strategy.