It's Us, Frederick & Sophie
2019-2023 | Frederick & Sophie as a story-driven kids lifestyle destination.
I conceptualized and designed the Frederick & Sophie site as a shoppable story book for kids ages 0-5+ with precocious store-protagonists Frederick and Sophie narrating product descriptions, story-posts, social media pages, and About page. Their highly distinctive voices evoked the curiosity, childlike wonder, and directness of our preschool audience.
The shop displayed a carefully curated selection of chic quality wooden toys that were seamlessly integrated in the Frederick & Sophie stories as (returning) characters or fitted to the lifestyle and taste of the Frederick and Sophie characters.
I selected, bought, and merchandised wooden toys, board games, plush, puzzles, art supplies, dolls, dollhouses, balance bikes and ride-ons from renowned toy makers and toy brands in France, UK, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Hungary, and USA. I selected, bought, and merchandised soft pajamas and play wear, baby teeters, and onesies to fill our baby category. All products not only fitted (in)to the Frederick & Sophie stories, style, and color palette, they also adhered to our strict safety guidelines, be of superior quality, and stimulate imagination, fine motor skills, and early learning.
I created the Absolutely Awesome Adventures of Frederick & Sophie as the store's main storyline, and I added Terribly Terrific Toy Stories as the place to read stories about the misadventures of our store's toys in Frederick and Sophie's toy room.
Newfoundland dog character Waldorf, nicknamed Wally, was the kids' loyal sidekick. Knowing that a fantasy story element reflected the endless possibilities of imagination and pretend play, I developed the character George as Frederick and Sophie's highly imperfect magical manny whose mixing up of spells often got them all into trouble.
I created all content on the site, blog, social media pages, newsletters including stories, features, product texts, graphics, captions, ads,
We localized the global online shopping experience and offered affordable Worldwide Express Shipping and local currency calculations and taxes from our warehouse in Germany.
The Site Experience
Built around the lifestyle and fantastical adventure stories of brand protagonists FREDERICK & SOPHIE and their friends, the site became a wondrous and whimsical world that could be shopped.
Shop The Stories
Through careful styling, themed edits, and the extensive use of watercolor and pen illustrations, Frederick & Sophie stories seamlessly integrated shoppable product images without interference to a story.
An F&S Shoppable Story example: Pappa's Pizza
Story, Story, Everywhere
Frederick and Sophie not only narrated our landing page, about page, and social media pages; they also added an imagination-inspiring note to each product.
Being as meticulous about visual merchandising in a digital environment as I would have been in a brick & mortar department store, I wanted our product photos to inspire imagination. Rather than just being a product on a white background, each product image had to be its own "store window display" on social media, newsletters AND in the edits, product pages, brand pages, and general product overviews of our online shop.
My efforts increased engagement and made our product photos stand out in Google shop and Google images.
T'is the Season...
At the beginning of each season, I updated the complete look and all content on the site, blog, social media pages, and newsletters. Spring, summer, fall, and winter turned the Frederick & Sophie site, stories and social media content into a celebration of a seasonal theme. With our audience being young parents, seasonal updates also introduced seasonal toys: balance bikes in spring, beach toys in summer, board games and arts and crafts in fall, and our Santa edit in fall/winter. This inspired shopping and increased engagement.
I used seasonal stories as the base for our seasonal toy edits.
Every season, I added a seasonal note to our logo on our site, social media pages, and in our newsletters.
I styled and accessorized our toys with illustrated water color graphics on international holidays for our social media pages and in our newsletters.
Toy Stories
Some of our toys became characters in their own story-line: Terribly Terrific Toy Stories
Toy photos brought the story to life, and Shop Now buttons invited "character"-to-cart action.
Each Toy Story was communicated on our social media pages with a scroll of the toy "stars" used in a story..
Plush monster Lila Boubou became somewhat of an own rock star. Boubou's own Instagram page soon became a fan of our content and shared our Boubou content through their stories.
My personal stories addressed parenting topics that the Frederick & Sophie stories couldn't. I assigned my long-time illustrator Maya E Shakur to create an illustrated character of myself. I used illustrations and illustration-photo collages to bring personal stories to life without disturbing the overall whimsical tone of voice.
Adding personal content allowed me to successfully pull in our global parent audience through shared interests which resulted in increased site visits, engagement, likes, and shares.
04 — Mentions, Shares, and Comments
Parents from around the world engaged with our content.
As a global site with a cross-cultural mindset, we paid attention to international cultural holidays, connecting with our clients and community from all around the world.
My consistent content creation and extensive story and SEO writing resulted in high Google search rankings. Products in the Frederick & Sophie shop could often be found above the sites of the brands itself and/or placed with larger department stores and large-scale digital retail brands.
Three Questions...
"Storytelling is the heart of our company."
My answers in the Three Questions section of a German trade publication.