Sakesho Website
eCommerce, Wine & Spirits
Sakesho redefines the sake experience, merging the soul of traditional craftsmanship with the ease of modern technology. They curate an expressive journey from artisanal origins to the contemporary table, turning each bottle into a narrative of culture, craft, and community. Committed to fostering a deeper understanding and enjoyment of sake, Sakesho offers not just a drink, but an invitation to a cultural movement where every sip is a step towards a global appreciation of this storied beverage.
Services
Project Type
Sakesho redefines the sake experience, merging the soul of traditional craftsmanship with the ease of modern technology. They curate an expressive journey from artisanal origins to the contemporary table, turning each bottle into a narrative of culture, craft, and community. Committed to fostering a deeper understanding and enjoyment of sake, Sakesho offers not just a drink, but an invitation to a cultural movement where every sip is a step towards a global appreciation of this storied beverage.
Services
Project Type
The team at Lion collaborated with Sakesho to revolutionize their online presence, developing a user-centric website poised to become the cornerstone of their future eCommerce marketplace. We infused the website with a renewed brand identity, tailored experiences through recommendation algorithms, and crafted every user interaction to be unique and captivating - drawing customers into the diverse and storied universe of sake.
In a digital age where convenience is king, Sakesho confronted several challenges to make sake culturally relevant and easily accessible online.
E-commerce options for sake were sparse, with few sites combining modern aesthetics with a sake-focused selection, limiting the visibility and reach of traditional and artisanal sake offerings.
The traditional sake market was complex and daunting for the average consumer, requiring a simplified, less intimidating introduction to this rich cultural staple.
The challenge was not just to sell sake, but to integrate it into the daily lives of consumers, making it as accessible and habitual as their favorite coffee or tea, transitioning from a traditional beverage.
We refined Sakesho's brand essence, enhancing its scalability and focus to resonate with sake enthusiasts. This brand evolution touched every aspect of the existing’s brand's look and feel, ensuring its readiness to captivate the right audience.
Through our Northstar Brand Workshop, we united Sakesho's stakeholders around a shared vision, crystallizing brand attributes, strategic directions, and goals to establish a cohesive identity for the brand's future.
Our comprehensive analysis of Sakesho's competitive set offered valuable insights, enabling us to position the brand effectively within the marketplace by highlighting its unique appeal and value proposition.
We created three distinct stylescapes, each a visual narrative drawn from the insights of our brand workshop. These conceptual mood boards capture the essence of Sakesho's brand identity and serve as a roadmap for its visual strategy.
In our Northstar brand workshop, we facilitated a collaborative worksop where Sakesho's key stakeholders engaged in defining the heart of their brand. This immersive session was instrumental in distilling the brand's core attributes, charting out strategic initiatives, and setting clear, actionable goals.
Our team conducted an analysis of both direct and indirect competitors in the sake market. This deep dive into Sakesho's competitive landscape allowed us to gather crucial insights, which informed our strategy for differentiating the brand. By understanding where Sakesho stood among its peers, we were able to carve out a unique market position that capitalized on its strengths and appealed to the sensibilities of sake enthusiasts.
Drawing from the rich insights and established brand identity in the workshop, we crafted three visionary stylescapes that illustrated potential pathways for Sakesho's brand evolution. After rounds of feedback, the final stylescape was selected and ensured that every visual element from the website to marketing materials conveyed the sophistication and passion of the Sakesho experience.
Our development of the Sakesho website delivered a streamlined product catalog, simplified navigation through a mega menu, and efficient content management with WordPress CMS integration, enhancing the user experience for sake enthusiasts.
We developed a responsive website that offered a rich, easily navigable digital catalog where consumers can browse, filter, and sort through a world of sake options.
Our implementation of a mega menu and user-friendly search and filtering tools simplified discovery and allowed enthusiasts to easily find and categorize sake selections.
We integrated a robust WordPress CMS layer, giving Sakesho's team the flexibility to manage marketing content and update their sake database with ease.
We developed a sake catalog for Sakesho, designed to immerse users in the depth and variety of sake. Each listing is comprehensive, complete with high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and a proprietary match score that predicts user preference.
An intuitive mega menu of sake category and collections streamlined the user journey, allowing for quick filtering based on category, price range, flavor notes, and more. The focus remains on a frictionless user experience, facilitating the discovery of new and favored sakes without the need for complex, multi-level search functionality.
Our backend solution allowed the Sakesho team to seamlessly create, update, or remove products from the catalog, maintaining an up-to-date and dynamic selection for customers. Each entry's detailed logging capability served a dual purpose: enriching the customer's insight into each sake and collecting nuanced data to enhance the machine learning algorithms that drive personalized experiences on the platform.
Our goal was to tailor the Sakesho experience for exploration and engagement, beginning with an onboarding quiz for a personalized taste profile, developing a matching algorithm for expertly curated sake recommendations, and creating a centralized educational blog to enhance users' knowledge of sake culture in an engaging way.
The onboarding process included a detailed tasting quiz and customized account setup that personalized one’s experience.
We helped develop the proprietary matching algorithm that expertly aligns sake selections with individual user taste profiles.
We partnered with SMEs to create taste profile archetypes that would reflect each user’s unique palate preferences after completing the onboarding quiz.
The focus of the blog was to create a centralized platform for enthusiasts to deepen their understanding of sake culture, presented in an engaging format.
We designed the onboarding process to include a detailed tasting quiz, allowing for a customized account setup that finely tunes the Sakesho experience to each user's taste preferences right from the start.
The AI-powered matching algorithm was developed by our team and guided by subject-matter experts on the Sakesho team to curate sake selections based on the unique taste profiles of each user. This behind-the-scenes logic acts as a sake companion that ensures a sake discovery process that is both personal and precise.
We took personalization a step further by crafting an interactive Taste Profile feature. Completing the onboarding taste quiz reveals a user's flavor preferences, allowing the app to recommend sakes that are not just popular or new but deeply connected to their individual taste preferences, ensuring every recommendation feels personally curated.
Upon launch, we aim to continue refining user experience as new insights arise. Some near-term goals include integrating improved recommendation algorithms with the launch of the eCommerce multi-vendor marketplace. In addition, future initiatives like customer and expert reviews and personal tasting notes are also in focus for the next scope of work with the intent to blend individual exploration with community insights to deepen the sake discovery journey.
