Innovative Retailer Knits up an Ecommerce Business

Koko Bino is a tremendous example of successful niche marketing with their bright and inviting ecommerce shop - running on, you guessed it, … Elastic Path. This UK-based retailer sells project kits for making all manner of baby and toddler gear from fine yarn.

Knitters form a huge online community (as I learned at Moose Camp last year), and while often excused as a “low-tech” constituency, knitters interact with online projects, tips and tutorials as much as the most enthusiastic participants of any other hobby and yarn companies have entrenched themselves into the blogosphere by sponsoring high-profile knitting bloggers.

As they describe themselves:

A design collective? A new knitting philosophy?

Kokobino was born because we love to knit, especially for our - or actually anyone’s - babies and toddlers, but we couldn’t find the patterns to get us excited.

We wanted to create simple kits with real, modern designer patterns, the most beautiful colourful yarns, such as real cashmere and soft baby merino, interesting buttons and accessories all put together with the right needles, labels and all other equipment you might need to create a gorgeous Kokobino piece.

The best thing is you’ll definitely be able to do it - trust us, we had to knit the first range ourselves! Instructions are kept very clear and simple and we’ve created a little system that will not only tell you how easy a project is, but that will also indicate if it is going to take a lot or a little of your time.

If you ever drop a stitch, lose the plot or realize that what you’re knitting doesn’t quite resemble the picture, don’t despair. There’s help online! Look up your problem in the knitting tutorial and you’ll be on your way again before you know it.

They are doing the right things to embrace their customers and nurture a community. Design-wise, the site is clean with ample whitespace while at the same time colorful and cheery. The mix of graphics interacting with top-quality photographs is admirable and the page layouts are simple making navigation easy while reinforcing branding. They wisely incorporate suggestive selling with product info appearing when the shopper mouseovers the lifestyle shots on category pages - additionally, the shopper is offered cross-sells and up-sells on product pages. Also each product’s contents are clearly indicated so you know you’ve got all the materials you need to finish. The image previews respond quickly (handy for seeing detailed yarn textures and color choices) and they’ve utilized custom attributes to designate the project’s skill level and time estimate.

Importantly, they’ve leveraged EP’s baked-in SEO tools by using “clean,” keyword-optimized URLs as well as product-specific title tags. Doing so will likely help in converting those desirable customers who know exactly what they want.

Congratulations on a fantastic site Koko Bino!

PS I warm, handmade scarves ;-)