Søstrene Grene - Helping a worldwide retailer go digital

Søstrene Grene, a Danish-founded retailer with over 140 stores in Europe and Asia approached Hello Monday to be their creative partner and help design their first e-commerce website. Since 1973 Søstrene Grene has built a reputation for offering a unique in-store experience: a cozy atmosphere and labyrinth-like layout combined with an ever changing product range of affordable home accessories, kitchenware and stationery with a distinctive Scandinavian feel.

The design team wanted to capture this unique store experience in the new e-commerce website, but their approach wasn’t to just copy the elements ‘one to one’. Instead, they started with Søstrene Grene’s core values - ‘hygge’, ‘joy’, ‘aesthetics’, ‘continuous renewal’ and ‘good finds’ - and reinterpreted them in a digital context. Aiming to create an experience that would be equally attractive, make customers feel just as welcomed, inspired and inclined to come back.

The solution was a flexible design and colour system to create the feeling of joyful discoveries. The modular system ensures that inspirational editorial content stays relevant in combination with changing collections of products.

The launch of the Danish version of Søstrene Grene’s e-commerce site in March 2020 was an immediate success. On the first day there was a new order every 7 seconds and at one point during that first day the company even had to hold back on the online advertising of the new site, to avoid putting too much pressure on their servers.