Hickmet Fine Arts

David Hickmet came to Claudia Watson Marketing in 2015 to help bring his family’s antique dealership business, Hickmet Fine Arts, into the 21st century. After 80 years (and three generations of Hickmets!) in business, they had found their brand was not representative of the company. They also had an ageing client base so needed help to reach a new and younger audience, to be their next generation of clients.

We started the project with a full assessment of the business, its marketing and brand positioning, and created a plan to bring this into line with the key stakeholders’ aspirations.

Rebranding

The team wanted their branding to have an Art Deco vibe, as this suited many of their pieces and passions. We decided their branding and assets also needed to convey their expertise and approachable nature, with messaging that invites people to reach out and ask questions, so the Hickmet team could build a relationship with a new audience.

Logo & eCommerce website redesign

The logo was designed by my design partner and applied to all the assets, such as social media pages, business cards and event materials. We then planned and built a more modern eCommerce website with a blog to share their expertise, better social media integration, video on product pages, more prominent testimonials, a better search function and a newsletter sign-up.

eCommerce website SEO

The redesigned website needed to be easily found by those searching for the antique sculptures and antique glass that Hickmet Fine Arts specialises in. With our SEO partner we reviewed and tuned the large catalogue, and trained the Hickmet team with a best-practice SEO guide for new pieces. The new website achieved consistently higher traffic, with visitors viewing more pages and spending more time on the site.

Ongoing marketing

Hickmet Fine Arts retained Claudia Watson Marketing to manage their online marketing: co-writing blog pieces about the artists and styles they specialise in, sharing them across social media and with relevant communities, setting up listening posts to find potential new clients, and making the most of their antique fair partnerships.