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Snapshot

13 System Users
1000+ Images
500 Pages Per Year
10 Publications

Service

Colour Management
Creative Retouching
Image Management
Catalogue Production
Proofing

Tech Stack Utilised

Renaissance MPM
Renaissance Photography Tracking

Benefits

Colour Accuracy
Trusted Supplier
Specialist Expertise
1st Class Communication
Reliable Production

When Colour is Key,
House of Bruar
chose ec2i
to Capture the
detail and nuances
of the brand.

Known as the ‘Harrods of the north’, The House of Bruar is a family-owned department store nestled at the foot of the stunning heather-strewn Cairngorms National Park.  Such is its unique position and diverse product range - quality contemporary country clothing, a 600 seater restaurant, glorious food hall, art gallery, country gifts, fish and chip shop and whisky hall – it welcomes over 2.5 million visitors per year and is the largest employer in the region with a staff of near on 300 people.

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“I’ve never found a photographer yet who can capture the perfect shot, first time, not through lack of skill or expertise, more the complexities of the product and shooting conditions at the time. But ec2i manage to enhance our images without drama or fanfare, perfectly capturing the look of our natural fibres and heritage fabrics.” 

Tom Birkbeck / Creative Director

Overview

Known as the ‘Harrods of the north’, The House of Bruar is a family-owned department store nestled at the foot of the stunning heather-strewn Cairngorms National Park.  Such is its unique position and diverse product range - quality contemporary country clothing, a 600 seater restaurant, glorious food hall, art gallery, country gifts, fish and chip shop and whisky hall – it welcomes over 2.5 million visitors per year and is the largest employer in the region with a staff of near on 300 people.

All of this is managed through an on-site warehouse and three more on a separate site with planning permission for a further two.

As well as the huge store, the company also mails out a coffee table catalogue to its 3 million + subscribers every autumn, a separate gift catalogue and, from 2023, a Spring catalogue too.  And there are several re-designs/spin-offs too.

Says Creative Director and family member, Tom Birkbeck, “There is no better marketing tool as a driver to our website than the catalogue.  And, through online analytics and ads, we can monitor sales from the moment the catalogue drops and whether those sales come in via the order form (yes, many customers still prefer this method of getting in touch), social media or the website.  We can literally see the sales spike when the catalogue delivers”.

“Our paper and postage costs are huge and we are looking at smaller, more regular catalogues in the future (hence the new Spring launch) but we will never ditch the catalogue entirely.”

 

 

The first, small catalogue was launched in 1998.  When ec2i started working with the brand 10 years ago, it was up to 74 pages with a mailing list of 1.2 million.  The latest Winter edition is 228 pages and, as Tom, says, “Our customers really look forward to receiving this and we know the shelf life of this catalogue is one of the longest as we only drop this once in the year so customers don’t feel overwhelmed.  For this reason, it also has to be right for colour and accuracy”.

It’s a huge job which starts with fabric buying (British tweeds, boucles, chiffon, printed cottons and more) back in the summer before the build of the Autumn 2023 catalogue starts in October 2022!

The process and journey is intense.  It will involve the directors and senior merchandiser, the womenswear buyer, mail order and cloth administrators, the head of customer services who will all give an in-depth review of the current catalogue and forecast for the next year.  But, even after all this, the product and pagination can change over the coming months, sometimes quite drastically as the company continually monitors content and sales and the product development team decide what new products to add for the following year.

The team starts with a 250-page range bringing it down to the eventual 228-page version.  It will be repaginated several times.  Excel spreadsheets of the SKUs start the journey.  Once this is complete, the ‘bones of the page’ as Tom and his team call it at this stage, are passed to the graphic designers to produce the ‘Look Book’ as an Indesign file.

The Challenge

Colour is critical to the brand.  Tom inherited ec2i for page production over 10 years ago and could easily have switched to an alternative supplier.  But, as he says “We like to build long-term working relationships and ec2i has developed with us over the 10 years to become one of our most trusted suppliers’

“Indeed, I can honestly say they are the most professional, organised and decent company we’ve ever outsourced to.  I have high standards which all my suppliers must also have.  They deliver on price, quality and communication, all of which are so important.”

House of Bruar has four in-house, full-time photographers plus a creative specialist who shoot all their own products, either on location on the glorious Scottish isles or in their own studio. 

 

 

From here, their own designer puts the pages together that go through various approval stages internally before the final images and InDesign files are uploaded into ec2i’s Renaissance Media Production Management system.

This process becomes known as the ‘Bible’ internally at House of Bruar but, explains Tom, ‘It can still change like a chameleon but there is only ever one file that moves around the team.  And on every round, our senior merchandiser will have the final view on copy accuracy”.

Once here, Tom and his designer can make any further text changes that are necessary before we output proofs to match for colour when he visits our studios for the final sign-off.

Results & Benefits

It's at this stage that the colour plays its critical role.  Tom and his team choose to shoot on home ground and the Scottish isles. 

This brings its own unique challenges: if the light is too bright, it will ‘blow’ the shots, too dark and the detail is lost.  “Ideally”, explains Tom, “we hope for a slightly overcast day with a gentle breeze to create movement in the garments.  But I can count on one hand the number of perfect days we’ve had over my 12 years of being involved in the photography.  That’s where ec2i come into the production.”

“Although our photographers can retouch too, we don’t have the expertise, dedicated, calibrated equipment or production protocols that a specialist company like ec2i has.  They can take my InDesign files and, by working with a dedicated team of retouchers who understand the brand, I’m confident I’ll get the required result within pretty tight timeframes.”

There might be images where the colour is too ‘hot’ and needs to be cooled down a degree or two.  And vice-versa. 

 

It’s a very personal matter and everyone has a view but years working on the brand gives Tom the eye and experience to know when the colour is right.  He’s a stickler for detail and, rightly, passionate about the family brand.

Scatter proofs are printed out for Tom to mark up any corrections and we’ve even been known to shoot a replacement product in our own studio and comp it into an existing shot.  That’s a service several of our clients use.

Working with an external supplier also provides scope to add extra retouchers should the job require it and, by running the whole project through our Renaissance Media Production Management system, Tom can share the images with his team remotely.

Once the retouching has been completed, Tom will sign-off the pages, all 228 of them in the week he is with us and we will upload pdfs to his chosen printer.  Then there’s just the trip back to Scotland, sometimes by plane, sometimes by car before he starts on the Sale catalogue and, this year, continues with the new Spring catalogue.

Conclusion

Ec2i has built up a solid relationship with The House of Bruar over a decade of working with them.  As Tom concludes, “We work with many suppliers and aim to build long-term relationships and stay for the long haul.  But the relationship has to work. With ec2i I get expertise and first class communication on a daily basis.  Many company’s profess to be good at this but don’t deliver.  I would have no hesitation in recommending them.”

 

 

With more regular catalogues, and possibly international markets, always under review, ec2i is now in negotiation to help House of Bruar gear up internally to be able to handle future expansion.

 

www.houseofbruar.com

WE COMMUNICATE YOUR MESSAGE, ENHANCE YOUR BRAND AND SMOOTH YOUR PRODUCTION PROCESS

 

 

Over 20 years of seamless business continuity is behind the company we are today and with a massive wealth of experience and knowledge to share with your team and brand, we ensure your project is completed on brief and on budget.

There is a can-do attitude that resonates through the very fabric of our company and with in-house R&D teams who spend their time developing and road-mapping our latest products and workflows to ensure that we offer the very latest production solutions to our clients. Our Renaissance complete workflow solution enables our clients to capture, create, manage and deploy their media content in one end-to-end platform. It’s bespoke and totally tailored to your production needs.

www.ec2i.biz