LIT your Dreams : Preparing an exciting startup for the digital future

PREMIS

Lit your Dreams is a children’s pajama design company based in Mexico City, Mexico. The brand offers a mix of silhouettes, decorative pieces, original prints, and own characters that create fun designs. What is extraordinary is that all the PJs glow in the dark. For Lit designers, darkness is a space to inspire creativity, spark imagination, and trigger dreams of fantasy and endless worlds.

CHALLENGE

During our work with Lit design team, multiple pain points were brought to light. Two of these points were critical and required swift intervention. The first was the absence of a clear flow between the brand and its retail extension. The second was the lack of digital presence in connection to the physical product.

SOLUTION

We guided the transformation of Lit your Dreams’ user experience strategy and performance. We also led the brand and product visioning and research, as well as the development of physical and digital prototype solutions; to maximize engagement and broaden its US-market expansion opportunities.

INSIGHT

Building customer engagement is all about interaction and accessibility. Traditional modes of such engagement would require a great deal of physical interaction as well as time, money and energy put into making such interactions possible. With the use of technology, however, customer engagement efforts can be enhanced by using simple tools such as a QR code.

RESEARCH + DELIVERABLES

Having identified the pain points, we put in place a strategy to test brand outreach in the US and Mexico through different brand manifestations, in order to devise successful brand connectivity solutions.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Lit Your Dreams rompted a wider research into retail, its current situation, problems, future, and possible paths of innovation. Through this research we interviewed more than 30 people working in the field whether they are trendsetters, solution providers, or product merchandisers. Reaching companies like Dior, Forg, The Tot, and others; in addition to a large number of interviews with users, and direct connection with four boutique shops: two in the US and two in Mexico, to get immediate reaction to the proposed prototypes and strategies.

IMAGINATION WORKSHOP

As part of the all-encompassing strategy we designed a workshop to capture children’s reactions to the glow-in-the-dark effects. Kids and parents, along with our team, were led into lit rooms, then we switch the lights off and drawings all over the walls started to glow (the magic moment). The objective was to understand what it really mean to them, to hear the experience described in their own words, and find out which story they connected it with.

BRAND AUDIT

One of the hanging-fruit insights is that the brand’s defining qualities are not clear to the target audience. A distinguished brand needs a clear message. So one of the first exercises we did was a branding boot-camp to extract the brand’s qualities and concise message, what makes it different, and what makes it special.

RE-BRANDING

As a result of the branding workshop, we decided, with Lit your Dreams design team, to brand Lit Your Dreams as an innovative children clothing company. Additionally, we further explored the playful nature of the glow-in-the-dark aspect of the brand and made it extremely clear to the user, through an ecosystem of products and services.

LEARN FROM THE MAKER

One of the easy-to-make products that could provide the glow-in-the-dark experience in shops was a technique inspired by Lit Your Dreams’ own seamstresses. After learning how they test the glowing properties of the fabric, we developed our night simulator into a much more cost effective and easy to implement prototype.

PHYSICAL OUTREACH

Retail still has one thing about it that simply cannot change: retail, in the end, involves transferring the possession of physical goods to a consumer. The transfer of real physical goods to a consumer is both the biggest challenge retail faces when taking on digital transformation, and also the biggest inhibitor that locks retailers into thinking that digital transformation isn’t going to impact them like other industries. Thus, much of our prototypes have a physical aspect to them to engage the user.

DIGITAL CONNECTION

The idea is that through the application of QR codes, consumers would have access to a variety of surprises and delightful digital offerings, such as a children’s book, a digital coloring book, games, etc. This digital link has been applied to the majority of our physical prototypes in order to bridge the gap between offline and online offerings; thus further enhancing the overall consumer experience, while simultaneously generating brand awareness and interest.

PRODUCT ECOSYSTEM

QR codes not only enhance the consumer’s in-store experience and contribute to an omni-channel retail strategy, but it can also give consumers a moment of intrigue and allow them to go on a brand journey from the comfort of their homes. Instead of using these codes to direct customers towards generic websites or provide them with information they might already have, brands need to engage with them. They need to start a dialogue with the people who walk into their stores and help them make their in-store purchase decisions. A QR code campaign contributes to a brand’s experiential marketing efforts and ensures its success by managing its planning, implementation, and monitoring with a robust retail execution.

MEET THE MAGIC BOX

It was very important to find a creative way of connecting the physical to the digital –ie. the physical experience with the digital offerings. Each of the prototypes contained a bit of magic and we wanted to highlight that in an encapsulated moment for the user. The changing room allowed for an entirely immersive experience: the night simulator shared a small window into what the experience could be; the stickers allowed the experience to be mobile; the signage communicated it; the pajama sleeve made it very personalized; the window display sparked interest; the digital offerings allowed customized access into this “wonder world”. The Magic Box is an event space that Lit Your Dreams offers for boutique shops as a moment of magic. It balances between the limitations of space and the immersive magical experience.

IMPACT

As a result of the brand and strategy overhaul, Lit Your Dreams was able to gain attention in both the Mexican and the American Market. In Mexico, Lit our Dreams is close to finalizing a deal with Walmart; while in the US some highly rated shops are interested in introducing the brand as part of their brands assembly.

MORE FROM THE PROCESS

Team: Rabih Ibrahim / Nicole Pokorny / Catie-Reagan Palmore / Kayla Moore