It has been a while now since Wehkamp.nl approached me to discuss the possibility of designing a basic collection for them. The foremost reason for this was the baskets and vases I had designed for Fair Trade Original that were for sale in their online shop at the time. At Wehkamp.nl they talk about their online shop as if it were a real mortar and brick shop. The idea is for visitors to get this same feeling, to experience it as a fictitious world where you can order real products. This is the exact opposite of what we do, namely, run a factory with materials, machines, workmen and women, and a shop where you can buy or order objects that have just been made.
We offer genuinely unique products, products made with care and craftsmanship, products with a story that people can identify with. To most people, this experience is not possible in the online world. This is similar to how, in the past, people assumed that, if an architect was very wealthy he could not possibly be creative, since creativity and commerce are mutually exclusive.
Likewise, they assume you only find impersonal and carelessly produced mass products online and, if you do a bit of shopping, you can find them at huge discounts. But an online shop is just as real as our shop, where you can sell both good and bad products and offer good or bad service. That’s the whole point of this new venture. We are simply going to create attractive, carefully produced products that can be purchased in the largest shop in the Netherlands. Large-scale is not always important, but if you want to sell something online, it can be very handy to be available 24/7, offer good service, deliver a product quickly and, in the event of problems, to be able to exchange the purchase quickly.
After all, we always enjoy a challenge and have not felt the need for our own online shop as yet, since we assumed that this would require bringing in huge amounts of additional competencies all at once. So this is a real stroke of good luck, since we’ll be working with people who put their heart and soul into work that we do not have the possibility, means or energy to do ourselves.
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