Engels — King of Hearts

How we created a new appearance and customer base for an existing family business. Starting with a long look in the mirror.

ENGELS is a Belgian manufacturer of windows and doors. A family business, now managed by Didier ENGELS. Started out as a small carpentry by his grandfather, to a medium sized company that employs more than 100 people. ENGELS windows and doors are produced according to high quality standards, with attention to sustainability and aesthetics.

When it was time for Didier to take over the company from his dad, he felt he wanted to change things up. In the first stadium, he chose to completely restructure the family business. Opting for vertical integration, which means that distribution is largely in their own hands. Afterwards, it was time to work on the brand. That’s when he came knocking at our door.

Challenge

ENGELS had built a successful business over the years, growing organically through relationships and word of mouth. With Didier as the new head of the company, there was an opportunity to define the brand to represent the business they wanted to become. As well as re-energise the visual identity to make it a starting block for growth.

Didier envisioned the company with specific target audience in mind. Creative, artistic, adventurous people. People who want to push the boundaries. The classic and not so classic families. Everyone who thinks qualitative materials and design are equal to care for sustainability.

So we talked and we immediately felt a disconnect between the brand – how it was then – and the spirit of the company. Their identity contained lots of good ideas, but there was not a strong strategy behind it. Didier wanted to make things a little more human—something we felt strongly about too. However, that was too ambiguous to be our guiding light. The vision needed to be more specific, a clear message that would set him apart from the more technical competition.

Solution

So, we set off to learn what the business needed during a period of transition. Therefore, the collaboration between King of Hearts and ENGELS needed to be one of mutual trust. We used our learnings to create a brand that both served the business growth while attracting the right audience.

En-En

We came up with the strategic basis of the brand: brand positioning and story. Once that was in place, we developed a campaign concept that helped the ENGELS brand to the right place in the market: the EN-EN concept. Great design doesn’t mean customers have to sacrifice sustainability when they choose ENGELS. Or the other way around.

Strong Personalities

In addition to the concept, campaign, website, sophisticated and Pinterest-proof neon signs and images, we went the extra mile. We believe that smaller family businesses – with limited budgets, too can find a way to speak to their audience in a meaningful way.

So, we made a video series called ‘Strong Personalities’. Didier helped us to find his dream customer. We made a beautiful visual story about them. Strong Personalities, because without great people there is no story. In the execution, there was no production company involved. We provided everything ourselves. Concept, producing, direction.