With a growing archive of fabrics stretching back to the company’s inception in 1903, one of the challenges was the sheer quantity of fabrics. Previously, the only way clients could see the range of fabrics was to either be sent some fabric swatch images or visit the Mill themselves and dive into the archive books. With the majority of clients being well informed in what they were looking for this made the entire process laboriously slow, and comparing colours and patterns could prove to be a difficult task.
Whilst nothing compares to the senses when you visit the Mill in person, we took this analogue process and turbo charged it, creating a new browse section within the website. This area clearly displayed the full collection of swatches within the archive in one place, using clear, detailed imagery which, once clicked, can be seen at almost full screen size. To make it even simpler for users to find what they were looking for, we added a filtering process that seamlessly allowed for fabric styles to be found by the choice of colour, reason for use, collection or period the fabric was created.