Share the Beauty.

Catholic Ventures, an emerging venture capital firm saw an opportunity to launch a store where the top quality Catholic goods could be found in one place. We were tasked with the challenge of designing an enjoyable e-commerce shopping experience that would convert to sales and build a loyal customer base through expressing an inspiring and creative Catholic lifestyle.

The Team

• 1x Creative Director 

• 1x Project Manager

• 1x Copywriter

• 1x UX Designer

Duration

• Three week sprint

• Brand strategy - one week

• Brand design - two weeks

• UI - four weeks
  

Rational

Catholic Ventures had a large email list and a network of publishers, makers, and creatives. They just needed a way to leverage that network, and their flagship project, Catholic.Store would be the platform they needed. In the Catholic market, individual publishers, makers, and stores were all competing with each other for the Catholic audience. Because of this, shoppers looking to buy gifts for friends and family have to buy gifts across all shops. What if shoppers could come to one place for all of their gift-giving and find products from every Catholic maker?

The Client

For this project, our team worked with Catholic Ventures, an entrepreneurship startup focused on uniting the digital continent and real world through ideation, design, and technology. 

We helped them launch their exciting new project: Catholic.store, an e-commerce platform that connects users with Catholic authors, artisans, and small businesses.

We needed to create a website that integrated form and function; it had to be stunning enough to stand out from the crowd, while also being visually simple and easy to navigate.

Target Audience and Project goals

Ambitious but straightforward

With the website we’d create, the goals revolved around the users most in need of the service. Most likely, they’d be someone who has already purchased Catholic products online, but has been frustrated with services like Etsy in the past. They desire a ‘one stop shop’ for all things Catholic, and don’t want to keep paying separate shipping fees on each individual artisan’s Etsy store.

Goal #1: Create a contemporary, eye-catching brand

Goal #2: Develop a system for the client to easily implement the brand in the future

Goal #3: Create a easy to navigate, simple to use e-commerce platform that’s modular and easy to expand on

The Results

3 months to profitability

The launch of the Catholic Ventures brand garnered multiple PR opportunities and set Catholic.store apart, not just as an e-commerce platform, but as a lifestyle brand on a mission. Within 3 months of launch, the platform was already profitable and growing. Now Catholic.store’s main challenge: Getting enough product to sell in time for their next big holiday push.