Alphapals
Launching A Brand That Makes Learning Fun
Role
Brand Identity, Brand Strategy, IA/UX, Visual Design, Illustration Design + Development
Technology
Nacelle, Shopify Plus
Verticals
Lifestyle
Website
A Modern + Magical eCommerce Experience
Background
Founded by a Malibu mother whose child was experiencing early learning difficulties, Alphapals offers a fun and interactive learning experience for families teaching their children the ABCs. Each Alphapals set contains 26 plush letters of the alphabet that transform into a comfy chair for easy storage and multi-functional use.
As a new brand entering the market, Alphapals approached Zehner to launch and position the brand as a family destination for learning and fun. The goal of the project was to build a whimsical world for Alphapals across a playful brand identity, and an interactive eCommerce experience that blends product with content. Setting the stage for Alphapals’ continued growth was also crucial to the brand and necessitated a scalable and modern online experience driven by a PWA platform.
Crafting A Brand That Delights
The Solution
As a new to market product, Alphapals needed to convey their hero product alongside their brand values and vision. In Zehner’s brand strategy work, our team set out to convey the warmth and playfulness of the Alphapals brand.
Zehner built a brand identity ecosystem that includes color palette, typography, and photo direction around Alphapals’ existing logo. Each of these components work to capture the soft and modern feeling of Alphapals.
Americana imagery served as inspiration for the site’s illustrations and color palette. Blue stars and red accents all inform the feeling of excitement and discovery that characterize Alphapals’ mission.
On the tech side, our team created a scalable Shopify Plus experience that harnesses the power of Contentful’s content management system and Nacelle’s PWA platform.
Creating An Illustrated + Whimsical World
The Magic of Alphaland
One of the highlights of the Alphapals’ site is Alphaland, an illustrated world that’s home to Alphapals’ learning content, games, and characters. Alphaland balances product considerations alongside interactive content that encourage imagination and education.
Alphaland features a word of the day and personality section so families can get to know the characters that make up their Alphapals’ plush toys.
Each letter of the alphabet is imbued with personality through favorite colors, animals, and character traits.
Alphaland encourages users to build a long-term relationship with Alphapals that extends far past the point of purchase. The new Alphapals experience blends strategic content and product offerings to create a learning destination families will love.
An Interactive Site Built On A PWA Platform
Alphapals needed a site that offered scalability and provided users with a clean and modern experience. We partnered with Nacelle to enable headless eCommerce and Progressive Web App functionality on the Alphapals’ site.
A Progressive Web App, or PWA, offers high performance and speed, two components that can drastically improve a user’s mobile experience. Nacelle’s PWA platform also offered Alphapals a place to consolidate and easily access their data from Shopify Plus and Contentful.
Partners
Shopify Plus
eCommerce platform for enterprise clients
Nacelle
Headless commerce platform.
Contentful
Content management system.
Yotpo
Customer reviews and user-generated content.
Klayvio
Customer lifecycle management program.
