The Challenge
Sloans & Kenyon is a 160-year old private auction house, known for the antiques and collectibles that it brings to the DC metro area. While the auction house attracts thousands of bidders from around the world, growth in the local area, particularly with younger audiences, is a main drive for the company.
The Solution
Sloans & Kenyon partnered with Apollo Matrix to achieve their objective of reaching a new audience. Transitioning to a digital catalog would boost accessibility by allowing new clients to easily read the description, view screenshots, and download the free app.
Focusing the design on the user, Apollo Matrix created a tool that allowed viewers to perform an exact search, browse, or use a department filtering approach to view the catalog. Additionally, we created an option to grow their brand through social sharing with buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Tactics
Discovery Workshop
Apollo Matrix started the project with a discovery workshop to fully comprehend Sloans & Kenyon’s needs. By fully immersed ourselves in the auction process and scheduling, we gained a more thorough understanding of how to best design for the user.
Design
Apollo designed the home screen to feature a sliding collage of key items that would immediately give users an overview of items sold in the auction. Users have the ability to casually stroll through items or purposefully explore using lot number, department or key words. With the ability to see a more detailed view, users will be able to know updated information on a specific item.
Social Media Strategy
The Sloans & Kenyon app provides social sharing capabilities to Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. Sloans & Kenyon’s main platform focus was Pinterest, which fuels creativity and collaboration of images. To grow their brand recognition, Apollo recommended they expand beyond strictly auction item boards to introduce non-followers to the brand through re-pinning. Additionally, Apollo suggested a pre-determined formula for automated wording for every item pinned. This would text describing the items with the Sloans & Kenyon brand as well as a call to action—“Get the App!”.
Results
The Sloans & Kenyon Auctioneers and Appraisers Catalog App was launched in 2014. The new app has increased visibility of the catalog, and the overall Sloans & Kenyon brand, to a wider audience.
