From Northumberland to Morocco
A Northumberland store which sources traditional goods from its own doorstep as well as rescuing unique objects from across the globe, is taking its weird and wonderful blend of products to a world-wide audience.
‘RE’, based in Corbridge, takes it’s name from it’s ethos to reclaim, restore and rescue traditional items from Northumberland to hand-made goods uncovered in far-flung destinations like South Africa, Morocco and India.
After two years as one of the region’s best kept secrets the store is stepping into the digital spotlight, thanks to the help of Newcastle-based Indigo Multimedia.
RE has launched its first website, developed and built by Indigo, in an effort to present it’s remarkable product range to a wider audience – and this includes traditional Northumbrian items including proggy mats, crocheted blankets, cushions and even knitted cats (just like Gran used to make).
Jenny Vaughan, co founder of RE explains, “It began as a flight of fancy - sourcing an eclectic mix of rare and interesting items. But gradually it has grown into a successful store and mail order business where many of the items sold benefit communities in some of the poorest parts of the world. There is a huge demand for our products; customers love the fact that each item has its own history and story to tell.”
The company was looking for something more dynamic than a mail order catalogue to sell its unique items to a global market, “we can change and update the site easily” explains Jenny “which is good news as we’re always finding new and interesting items to add to the range. And for a company with a focus on promoting local Northumbrian products as well as globally sourced items, when it was looking for a company to design and build the site it looked close to home first, finding Newcastle based Indigo Multimedia.
Andrew Graney Indigo Multimedia Director explains the concept behind the website. “It was important that we married the technology involved in a creating a functional ecommerce site with the unique traditional nature of the products. So we created a site with a very fresh, clean design, relying on beautiful photography to sell the products rather than lots of heavy text and clever graphics.”
The website, which has so far attracted 70 thousand visitors, displays a product range of exclusive and distinctive items including hand made baskets from Southern Africa part of a project created to bring relief to an area hit by HIV; hand-woven items from a community project in the Kwa Zulu province of South Africa; rescued paper notebooks made from Indian advertising posters and a range of traditional Northumbrian items produced by local suppliers.
In the press:
Simpson Associates
"These factors coupled with their support to improve our availability via all major search engines has seen an 80% growth in our site visitor rates since our site was relaunched."
David Clark,
Director.
