Case study: LoveCrafts

Who are LoveCrafts?

LoveCrafts is a social network, publishing platform and online marketplace aiming to be the leading destination for all crafting needs. Crafters use the website to share images of their work with the online crafting community, access instructional content from professional designers and purchase materials.

Where did it all start?

LoveCrafts launched in 2012 and was soon uniquely positioned in an industry typically seen as antithetical to technology. Most craft sales are still in physical shops but, within two years of its launch, LoveCrafts had warehouses in the UK and US and had fulfilled online orders in almost 100 countries.

What’s the marketing approach?

LoveCrafts’ marketing activity is concentrated on performance advertising, using Facebook’s audience segmentation tools and keyword combinations on Google to generate new leads. The marketing team invests by profitability and measures success in terms of life-time value/customer acquisition cost for each channel and country.

LoveCrafts is now starting to turn its attention to brand building, investing in awareness campaigns through social media and display, as well as incorporating video. Whilst the company found TV too broad to be economical for promoting individual crafts, LoveCrafts hopes that the aggregation of crafts into a universal brand may be more effective.

When choosing marketing channels, available volume is an important consideration beyond customer acquisition cost: while some channels may be highly effective, they need to be wide reaching to help the business drive scale. Similarly, as an internationally active company, LoveCrafts prefers global platforms that don’t require country by country management.

How is data used?

LoveCrafts harvests audience data from its content and community pages to spot crafting trends. The team employ analytics to identify which craft projects generate the highest engagement, allowing them to understand what materials customers might want to buy. This data is shared across the company to help guide inventory decisions.

Once LoveCrafts was established as a third-party e-commerce platform, the team applied the market knowledge they had gained from monitoring audience data to launch their own highly successful craft materials brands.

What is company culture like?

LoveCrafts founder Edward Griffiths describes the company as the equivalent of his own craft project. The brand vision is to be ‘smart, kind makers’ who identify with the joy of making.

Tell us a fun fact

LoveCrafts’ predicted crafting trends include a resurgence in scrapbooking, macramé, weaving and embroidery, with growing interest amongst crafters in mindfulness, sustainability and slow fashion – the antidote to disposable culture!