“Everyone at Switch is excited to help us share our values and story with the world. The whole team understood us quickly; we share the same language – they picked up our market quickly and how we can best communicate.”
Catherine Barratt
Furnitubes Managing Director
Primary products:
Modular seating and planter systems, security bollards, litter bins, cycle stands, and other outdoor furniture essentials.
Key Differentiators:
- Modular solutions are durable and versatile with easy installation and maintenance.
- All-domestic manufacturing using 100% recycled steel and environmentally friendly timber such as Endura Thermally Modified Ash and reclaimed tropical hardwood.
Key product lines:
Railroad, AKRI, Uniun, Elements, Bell Bollard
Market position:
A significant player in the British urban landscape sector, with their products being implemented across major public realm projects in the UK, along with private shopping centres, educational institutions and commercial developments.
Project TL;DR
Switch partnered with Furnitubes to develop and execute a comprehensive B2B marketing strategy. Through the CATALYST process, Switch first refined Furnitubes’ brand fundamentals, establishing a clear narrative focused on transforming urban spaces into realms of wellbeing.
How the relationship works
The partnership evolved into a fully integrated marketing operation where Switch functions as Furnitubes’ complete marketing department, providing:
- C-level strategic guidance
- Marketing execution across multiple channels
- Design and content creation
- Project management and performance optimization
The structure of the relationship looks like this:
Results
The collaboration yielded significant results in the first few months:
The partnership’s success stems from a shared commitment to values-driven business practices and a deep understanding of Furnitubes’ market position as a design-led manufacturer of sustainable, UK-made outdoor furniture solutions.
Scenario
Furnitubes build thoughtfully designed, long-lasting outdoor furniture, and they do it well. In fact, they’ve been doing it for over 70 years in a market growing in both opportunity and competition. Their reputation and small internal marketing team brought in steady business, but they knew they could achieve more.
They were looking for a marketing partner that could help them evaluate their position in their market and devise a long-term, multi-disciplined communications strategy that would help them take the right step forward towards sustainable growth.
While still wanting to be involved in the marketing process, their leadership needed a marketing partner that could both strategise and provide value at C-Level while also taking care of granular execution.
From a human perspective, Furnitubes always looks for partners that approach business and life in the same way they do. They believe that their team’s wellbeing comes first. They treat each other with genuine kindness and respect. And they make sure that the process and result of their work is enriching for everyone involved – from factory floor to bums on seats.
All of the above made the Switch X Furnitubes partnership nearly inevitable.
Approach
Fundamentals First
We cannot speak on behalf of a client until we truly get to know who they are and what they stand for. While their existing brand documentation was helpful as an introduction, conversations with their leadership team led to a slight redefinition of their brand.
Over several sessions, we revisited and refined their brand fundamentals. Their worldview, purpose, promise, values, personality, and tone of voice. Everything that makes them uniquely Furnitubes.
This internal document would serve both as the basis for all external communications, and as a behavioural guide for everyone within the organisation.
Market deep-dive
Before working with Furnitubes, Switch had zero experience in the outdoor furniture manufacturing industry. With guidance from Furnitubes leadership, we began our education through extensive market research, in-depth analysis of local and international competition from a business and communication standpoint, and a full audit of all communication touchpoints that Furnitubes had used in the past.
From the top
While getting to know what the brand stands for and the market it operates in, we also wanted to dive deeper into how it operates. Rather than jumping into marketing tactics, we needed a clear understanding of the business’s needs at a high level to make sure the strategy serves its long-term vision rather than prioritise short-term gains that could run contrary to where Furnitubes wants to be in the future.
Throughout the onboarding process, we combined:
- Market and industry knowledge brought by Furnitubes leadership
- Communication and B2B expertise brought by our Fractional CMO service
- Brand fundamentals and a clear business narrative
- In-depth market and competitor research
to ensure that our strategists, marketing experts, and design team had all the necessary information needed to craft a well-rounded yet focused communications plan.
Execution
Starting Strategy
Furnitubes operates in a market where maintaining a strong reputation is essential. While their communication efforts to-date did a great job of communicating the functionality of their product lines, our strategy was aimed at building their reputation as leaders in their field – as an organisation that truly cares about the people their product lines will ultimately serve.
We set about creating high-effort content that would grab the attention of key audiences, and distributing it via marketing platforms on which we we know said audiences are active. These efforts and services included:
- Organic & paid social media with a focus on LinkedIn
- Organic & paid search engine marketing
- Email marketing
- Consistent website updates & CMS management
- Handling of third-party directories
- Digital PR
- Key executive thought leadership
We project managed each aspect of these services, making sure Furnitubes leadership was aware of all efforts, while only needing to be involved at the highest strategic level, and to provide required information.
Fully integrated
Through the partnership, Furnitubes gained a full-size marketing department with access to experts in business strategy at C-Level, marketing strategists and specialists with niche capabilities, a diverse design team, and dedicated project and account managers overseeing the operation.
The day-to-day functions of the relationship include weekly operational catch-ups, monthly CMO strategy meetings, attendance of Switch team members at Furnitubes internal meetings, and full team brainstorming sessions. Switch team members are also made available for in-person meet-ups with the Furnitubes team for industry event attendance.
Measure & Improve
Since this partnership inherited the efforts of previous marketing strategies, the partnership’s scope also included optimisation of existing sources of business. We therefore identified key performance indicators at an early stage that we would then use to narrow down which sources of potential business were worth expanding or shrinking in order to maximise resources.
Each month, we analyse overall performance with the aim of tweaking strategies or identifying potential experiments to conduct in search of new lead opportunities in collaboration with their sales team. While Furnitubes want to grow, they want to do so while maintaining control over the quality of business they receive, and this strategy is based on that ideology.
Results to date
Within the first few months of our partnership, we helped bring renewed clarity and firepower to Furnitubes’ external communications, and provided tools for enhanced internal communication through the redefinition of the brand’s fundamentals.
