SK Case Study

SK’s founding story is specific: a borrowed necklace on a first date, an airport farewell, and the jewellery the founders later gave each other. That gave the project a more useful starting point than an abstract claim about luxury. The work needed to make that personal origin recognisable across an identity, a shop, and the details around a gift.

The brand notes record a change in emphasis, from the art of keeping to the warmer idea of being given and kept. We carried that distinction into the language and product naming. Sunday, Farewell, and Standby connect pieces to moments in the founders’ story; plain descriptions still explain what each piece is.

That became a working principle for the project: let one concrete detail carry the feeling, then give the customer the information they need. The same principle applies to a headline, a product description, the note inside a box, and the message confirming an order.

We treated the identity as a set of decisions people could repeat. Ivory provides the ground, forest anchors the composition, and gold stays a fine accent. Oxblood adds warmth through packaging and selected brand moments. The guidelines explain those roles as well as supplying colour values.

Typography follows the same division of responsibility. Britney carries the expressive headlines; Quicksand carries descriptions, labels, and instructions. Logo variants, clear space, minimum sizes, and ready-to-use files make the system useful beyond a single website mockup.

The image direction separates atmosphere from evidence. Campaign references can communicate a feeling, while catalogue and detail views need to show the piece clearly. The guidelines identify generated studio references and ask for verification against the physical jewellery. That distinction matters when the image is also helping someone decide what to buy.

The homepage begins with three words and one photograph: Objects to Keep Close, over a single ring on a hand. There is no carousel and no offer. The restraint is the message: this is a house that chooses carefully, and asks the visitor to look closely too.

The first scroll moves from feeling to choice. A strip of categories (pendant sets, earrings, rings, gifts, new arrivals) leads into The First Pieces: the opening catalogue, six pieces on matching ivory backgrounds, each with its name, a one-line description and a price. The grid is small on purpose. A launch catalogue reads as considered when every piece can be seen at once.

On a phone the same opening holds: the wordmark, the headline set in two lines, and the ring filling the width. The delivery note stays at the top on every screen, because it answers a buyer's first practical question before they ask it.

SK is two founders, and the catalogue is organised the same way. Choose Your Line sets SK Woman and SK Man side by side, joined by an ampersand: Kelly shapes the women's expression and Sam the men's. SK Woman opens the house in sterling silver; SK Man is marked In the Making, with its own photograph and a note on what is to come.

Showing a line that is not ready yet is a deliberate choice. It tells a visitor the house is still being built, gives the second founder's work a place from the start, and sets an expectation instead of hiding half the brand until launch.

On the product page the task becomes specific: understand the piece, choose an option, and decide. The name carries the story (Sunday Cross is named for a first date), while everything a buyer needs sits beside the photograph: the finish with its swatch, the chain length, the price with VAT included, and a single Add to Bag button with a save option next to it.

Stock is stated honestly. A line under the button says how many are left and when it will be dispatched, which matters for a small house where pieces are made in limited numbers. Below it, three short lines cover delivery, returns and the gift box, and a link to speak to the house is there for anyone choosing a gift or unsure of a size.

On a phone, the photograph comes first and the decision panel follows as one reading sequence: name, price, finish, length, Add to Bag, then the reassurance. The layout changes; the questions it answers stay connected.

The full catalogue keeps the same ivory field and scale for every piece, so a customer can compare without a different composition competing each time. Filters for category, finish and sort sit in one row above the grid, with a count of the pieces shown, which keeps the catalogue honest about its size.

One tile in the grid breaks the pattern on purpose: a photograph of the red velvet box with the line It began with a borrowed necklace, linking to the story. It is placed inside the catalogue rather than above it, so the reason behind the pieces is met at the moment of choosing between them.

Around the shop, the House page explains the origin, Materials & Care answers ownership questions and Gifting explains presentation. The project notes also separate story from specification: a warm voice should never become a claim about stones, rarity or longevity that has not been established.

Most SK pieces are bought for someone else, so gifting is treated as part of the product, not an add-on at checkout. On the homepage, Every Piece Began as a Gift lists what arrives without asking: pendants matched with studs, a red velvet box, and a note written by hand.

The Gifting page sets out the same promise as four considered details. The box is heart-shaped or classic. The set arrives complete, so the gift is whole when it is opened. The note is written by hand on ivory stock, up to 240 characters. And the discretion: prices never appear in the parcel, with gift receipts on request.

That last detail is the kind a buyer would not think to ask about but would mind if it were wrong. Stating it plainly removes a worry at exactly the point someone decides whether to send a gift directly.

The House page tells the founders' story as a sequence of short chapters: a borrowed necklace, a flight missed, a proper farewell, a necklace given, a bracelet in return. Each chapter is a few sentences and a photograph, and ends with a link to the piece named for that moment.

Tying the story to the catalogue this way keeps it from being decoration. Someone moved by a chapter is one click from the piece it explains, and someone looking at a piece can find the moment behind its name.

The back office extends the same system into daily work. Orders bring payment, packing, delivery, and returns into one place. The stock view separates what is physically on hand, what is held, what is free to sell, and what is incoming. Those are different numbers with different consequences for the customer.

We organised the interface around the team’s tasks: sell, manage the catalogue, fulfil, maintain the website, and manage the house. An order waiting for payment needs different attention from a paid order ready to pack or a delivery exception. Keeping those states visible helps the team find the next action.

The examples below use the actual back-office components with a small set of local sample records. They demonstrate the interface and its state distinctions; the names, order totals, and stock figures are illustrative data.

Checkout creates the order and reserves the selected stock together. Paystack handles the payment interaction. The server then verifies the provider’s record, including the amount and currency, before recording a paid order. A message from the browser alone is not enough to establish that the payment is valid.

The implementation also handles the time between those events. Unpaid holds expire, payment attempts can be retried, and a payment arriving after a hold has ended needs another stock check. If the pieces are no longer available, the result becomes an exception for the team to resolve through the refund workflow.

Communication follows those state changes. Order events enter an outbox with stable event identifiers, and Resend delivers the messages with retry handling. Transactional updates, optional customer letters, and team alerts have different purposes and subscription rules. Treating email as part of the order’s lifecycle keeps it connected to what actually happened.

The project joins a brand system, a public storefront, a back office, and the order services behind them. The documented refinement work goes beyond the ideal checkout: provider interruptions, late and duplicate payments, email retries, and staff-access changes all affect whether the experience remains understandable and recoverable.

The important checks follow those connections. Does an interrupted payment leave the stock in the right state? Can a repeated notification create a duplicate action? Does a customer’s email describe the order’s actual status? Can the team distinguish something waiting from something that needs intervention? These are service questions as much as implementation questions.

The case study describes the implemented scope and the documented revisions. The next evidence should come from observed use: completed purchases, recovery after interruptions, email delivery, fulfilment, and the manual work the team still performs. Those observations are needed before claiming commercial uplift or a measured improvement in operations.