Suite NY

We began our journey with SuiteNY with an objective to extend their 8,000 ft’ showroom to a broader audience, expanding its appeal to a national architect & designer (A&D) trade community. The foundational strategy was focused on strengthening their omnichannel touch points within their core NYC A&D residential and commercial project base, while introducing their showroom to an end-user retail audience who may be buying similar ‘high-end design’ pieces from more mainstream online DTC design resources.

As eCommerce was a new channel at Suite NY, neta created an eCommerce strategy and subsequently shepherded the strategy as an integrated team member with Suite NY’s showroom sales people and vendors. The biggest challenge in conceiving of how to shift the showroom sales experience to a transactional eCommerce one, was that the sales associates were integral to the sales process, in that they offer highly customized design presentations, coupled with expert guidance to manage the client experience from initial product selection to white glove delivery and installation onsite.

More than a decade ago when we engaged in this project most eCommerce platforms were not equipped to handle the thousands of variations from different finishes to fabrics with a variable SKU system. We decided that we would leave the customization to the sales floor by facilitating an interactive and sales oriented premium digital service interface, that was influenced by some of the top of the game in home DTC operations, like Williams-Sonoma. 

However, given the depth of world class designers and manufacturers featured within the showroom, we still needed to visually show as much product as possible, which would require detailed specifications that were able to be saved in a virtual binder much like an eCom shopping cart or wish list feature. The binder facilitated a productive dialog with an expert Suite NY salesperson that could be done remotely from the showroom.

One of the biggest ‘mentality’ hurdles for the highly customized nature of SNY’s sales, was how direct purchasing online was going to be introduced to the Suite NY customer. We decided to start with a smaller assortment and to introduce eCommerce through a Quickship program, where SuiteNY would be able to structure a drop-ship program with its leading vendors and warehouse a modest inventory of what were consistently their strongest selling vendors and selling items. What was classified as a quickship item, was determined by sales volume and then a supplemental assortment of decorative accessories at more palatable price points was added, to serve what is more consistently a lower average order size online. It wasn’t just SuiteNY that had to get their head around a multi-level approach to selling, we met and structured drop-ship vendor agreements with SNY’s, predominantly European Designer vendors, who were reticent to explore the possibility of selling ‘showroom’ product online in fear of losing cachet.


The design and custom development of suiteny.com took 12 months from 1st wireframe through to rigorous fulfillment and end-to-end user acceptance testing. The quickship items, that shipped directly from the vendor, as well as SNY’s own warehouse, was supported by a custom LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform, where we devised both business and technical requirements in our CMS implementation.

Our final role in bringing the virtual operation into existence, was defining the job specification for a new full-time operational resource to join the Suite NY team to oversee the digital and eCommerce operation, facilitating customer service with showroom sales reps and eCommerce/content management.
 

We took the opportunity of expanding Suite NY’s distribution in both online and offline channels to also evaluate the optimal brand positioning. For ease of URL entry, we shortened the full Suite New York logo to Suite NY, placing it at the masthead of the new website.  

For overarching UX Design, we provided detailed wireframes and created all content, including photo shoot orchestration, website art direction and project management. We had a great starting point, in that Suite NY, had a beautiful showroom, an atmosphere of relaxed luxury surrounded by views of the iconic Empire State and Chrysler buildings. The website was constructed around expansive hero images that showcased the gorgeous lighting, fixtures, displays and environs of the physical showroom.

Given the breadth of the product assortment, and as a content budget control, we devised a vendor-generated asset program that would adhere to suiteny.com’s new high quality image requirements for enhanced zoom and image enlarge capabilities. These were critical to mirroring the in-person showroom experience where evaluating texture, materiality and finishes was imminent in the designer/architect’s decision-making process.  

As a single showroom, independent operation, the presence of the owners was central to the Suite NY showroom experience, from their friendly greetings to their vivacious vendor-client evening gatherings.  We introduced their warmth into the refined digital experience through tone of voice, personal handwritten signatures and graphic elements that contrasted the clean, minimalism of the brand’s digital identity and color palette, consistent with the physical experience of the showroom.

According to one of the top salespeople, “the easiest way to sell one of SNY’s designer furniture pieces was to show it in its environment, it sells itself”. In addition to selling high-end international designer furniture with a premium eCommerce experience, an objective of the website was to create a new way of online commerce centered around residential, hospitality, commercial and cultural projects. Inspired by the high-quality architectural photography of leading interior and architectural publications, we designed the Projects section of the website with high res, rich imagery that showcased Suite NY’s client’s work with cross-section sub-feature that allowed 1 click shopping of the items featured within each project image.

As the A&D trade community is a rich one, and ultimately Suite NY strove to be a gathering place for their clientele, we integrated a  WordPress Blog, naming it SUITENEWS, for ease of posting about designer resources, IOTW’s (items of the week), New York City recommendations and at the nascent beginning of social media an integrated social presence.  Because collaboration is key to any creative process.