York Community Furniture Store

About the Client

York Community Furniture Store (YCFS), opened in 1988, is the go-to reuse store in York for buying and donating pre-loved furniture. They accept used furniture and appliances, complete with a free collection service, and offer them to the community at affordable prices. Concession prices are available to students and those on means-tested benefits. Having been such a successful model community furniture shops have gone on to open in both Selby and Scarborough.

Objectives

• Conduct thorough analysis of comparable organisations to assess their branding strategies, web presence, and digital marketing approaches across charity and furniture retail sectors.

• Review YCFS's current website for user experience, design consistency, ease of navigation, platform usage, and functionality including donation collection and mobile responsiveness.

• Develop strategic recommendations for updating YCFS's branding and marketing strategy to better resonate with their target audience across all three locations.

• Create a detailed website redesign brief for professional implementation including integration of the IT Reuse project and unified branding across all charitable activities.

Project Outcomes

YCC delivered a comprehensive digital transformation strategy for York Community Furniture Store through extensive competitor analysis and stakeholder research. The team evaluated eight competitor websites across charity and reuse sectors, identifying key design principles, navigation best practices, and effective branding strategies that could enhance YCFS's digital presence.

Through detailed SWOT analysis, our research revealed critical issues with YCFS's existing website including inconsistent branding, a poor navigation structure, and limited accessibility features. The team conducted surveys to test new logo designs and colour schemes, with certain options receiving higher scores for representing community values and "building a home" concept. As a result, a refined colour palette featuring bold greens with contrasting tones was recommended to improve visual impact while maintaining brand familiarity.

The project's key achievement was developing a detailed website redesign brief to rectify issues discovered through the SWOT analysis, and to integrate a number of YCFS's partner charities including IT ReUse, Selby Bike Project, and Scarborough Workshop. Further marketing recommendations included structured social media strategies with platform specific content templates, cross-platform promotion tactics, and targeted approaches for each location's unique demographics.