Jarrolds Signature
Launching a new sub-brand product line for a heritage retailer.
Founded in 1770, Jarrolds is a family-run department store deeply ingrained in day-to-day Norwich life. We leveraged the company’s rich history to create its first-ever own-brand collection: Jarrolds Signature. Our team partnered with Jarrolds throughout the entire process, from deep audience research to nailing the packaging's intricate details. We defined the new range’s tone, tints, and scents, leading on design and the go-to-market strategy, crafting a practical sub-brand structure that looked and sounded as immaculate as the Jarrold’s store.
Case study
THE BRIEF
For over 200 years, Jarrolds has offered a curated collection of other people’s products. Now it was time to craft a product range distinctly their own. A premium sub-brand of elevated bath and body products that would sit proudly on the Jarrold’s shelves and in customers’ homes for years to come.
To kick things off, we got to work researching and defining the addressable market, outlining the business case and category positioning, and developing a comprehensive programme of work to bring it all to life. Working in lockstep with key Jarrolds stakeholders across retail, digital and management along the way, this strategic work informed every aspect of the Signature range identity and design. Our plan was simple: leverage centuries of Jarrold’s name being the marker of good taste into the creation of their own products.
OUR ANSWER
Walking through the Jarrolds doors, we went straight for the company archives. Images immediately jumped out: suave ‘60s suits, colourful ‘30s Christmas ads, mustachioed men from who knows when. Confidence, excellence and pride were in abundance. A testament to Jarrolds’ meticulous curation and taste over time.
That’s when we spotted the signatures. Marked with dancing elegance at the bottom of the company’s founding documents. We saw it once. We saw it everywhere. In our eyes, it represented the Jarrolds spirit at its most refined, most confident and most elegant — the literal mark of approval and taste.
THE OUTCOME
The ‘Signature’ range marks a fresh chapter in the company’s story; a thread that weaves together the fabric of Jarrolds’ heritage. It boldly embellishes a new locally-made, locally-sourced toiletries range, stamped with a timeless polish rooted in the business’s rich past, and topped off with a refreshing touch of modernity.
Collating clippings, pictures and palimpsests from the archives, we designed visuals that harness heritage. Old logos. Hand-drawn illustrations. Mid-century portraits of smiling shoppers. Using a bright colour palette loyal to the brand’s past, we carefully brought all these snippets together into a coherent, harmonious identity, before signing it off with a signature as relevant today as when it gracefully marked the company’s founding document in 1770. Quietly confident, carefully considered, assuredly uplifting.
With Signature, the Jarrolds name doesn’t just sit at the entrance of the shop, but on its shelves. The door is open for wider expansion into other product ranges, too, entrenching the Jarrolds name more firmly into the hearts, homes and minds of people across the county, and beyond.
We’re proud to have created a range that opens its arms to both a remarkable history and a flourishing future — in signature Jarrolds style.
