With Empath-e came the rare opportunity to work with a blank canvas – to build a communications program from the ground up – and the challenge of articulating a complex business model.
Moveable Online, a longstanding client-partner, engaged Pear to act as communications consultant to Empath-e, an online retailer of healthcare equipment and supplies. From the beginning, it was apparent that Empath-e would present challenges above and beyond any e-commerce initiative we had encountered. Their business model was not only complex and multi-tiered but also engineered to evolve in response to Empath-e’s growing market exposure. It would be many things to many people – and it would be our task to distill these things into a single, universally appealing brand.
Our work progressed on parallel fronts. To aid with Empath-e’s immediate need to market their value proposition to potential clients and partners, we developed a simple suite of promotional tools. Here, we focused on the creative communications challenges alone, defining the design parameters that would govern our work on all fronts.
Our contribution to the service itself – the online initiative – was significantly more demanding. With Moveable’s Advantage Webstore e-commerce platform as our foundation, we planned for the integration of Empath-e’s various customized features and permission-based sales process. As with most large-scale projects, it was necessary to articulate our strategies through wireframes and logicflow mapping before committing ourselves to any visual design. This allowed us to isolate each phase of the design process. Knowing that product photography would vary in both style and quality, we anticipated its impact on page design and limited our application of colour and motif.
