Product indistinguishable from competitors
The same record, the same Rega — available everywhere and almost always cheaper on a marketplace.
why the store looks the way it does
The case
for a face
A justification of the design concept following the logic of situation → goals → constraints → shared decisions → money. No visual decision here is presented as "because I like it" — only as a response to a condition fixed at the start.
01 · what we started with
Background
The old site worked like a warehouse checkout
A grid of cards, filters, price. A site like that doesn't help you choose — it only lets you compare price. In a price comparison, a small shop always loses.
The store's value lived offline
A seller who remembers a customer's taste, a conversation at the counter, the listening room, regulars. None of that existed in digital.
High check, long decision
Equipment is bought on trust, not on discount. Trust has to be built before the visit to the showroom.
The store sells not records, but belonging to a community of listeners. The website did not communicate this with a single pixel.
problem statement agreed with the client
02 · goals
What we agreed to do
- 01Move away from price competition — stop looking like a catalog.
- 02Transfer the store's main asset into digital: people and the atmosphere of the room.
- 03Give a reason to return, even when the person isn't buying today.
- 04Build a community around the store, not one-time traffic.
- 05Make the site recognizable enough that people forward it to each other.
03 · the frame inside which decisions were made
Constraints
No photo production
Shooting the room, records, and people is expensive and becomes outdated instantly.
No music rights
Commercial releases can't be played on the site.
No portrait rights
Real faces of visitors can't be published.
Small assortment
30–60 items in a standard grid look poor.
One person on content
Anything that requires daily production dies within a month.
Mobile browses, desktop chooses
Most traffic is phone; equipment is researched on a big screen.
04 · brand carrier — original illustration
The key decision
Marker, oil pastel, pencil, and collage; an acid palette — yellow, vermilion, cyan, moss — on cream paper; deliberate incompleteness of line, grain, and "stuck-on" shadows. The rationale comes from the product itself: vinyl is noise, grain, defect, and manual ritual. A perfectly smooth digital interface would contradict what the store sells. Form follows medium.
- No photographyPortraits are drawn, not shot. Content cost is the artist's time, not a studio.
- No portrait rightsA drawn face is not a photograph of a specific person.
- Limited assortmentThe showcase is built around people, not the number of items.
- Indistinguishable productA layout can be copied, a hand cannot. Illustration is irreproducible by a competitor.
- Weak reason to returnA portrait is a gift and an artifact: people come back for it.
×No photo gallery — expensive and becomes outdated instantly.
×No marketplace grid — that's a return to the price battlefield.
×No dark 'audiophile' theme — the visual code of dozens of competitors.
×No wow animations without a function — they won't survive maintenance by one person.
05 · each page as an answer to a goal
Screens
- task
Deflect the expectation of 'cheap here' and establish 'curated here'
Home
A spinning record with a portrait at its center. The first screen says in two seconds: this is not a warehouse, this is a place.
View page → - task
Transfer the atmosphere of the room into digital
Wall of Ears
A wall of portraits with genre tags and quotes. Clicking a face plays the track that person was listening to.
View page → - task
Prove that the community exists
Full House
A dense mosaic of dozens of pencil portraits. Social proof made of graphics, not reviews.
View page → - task
Offer a way to choose that a marketplace doesn't have
Crate
Filter by genre and — crucially — by color. Vinyl is chosen first with the eyes, then with the ears.
View page → - task
Create an emotional contact with expensive gear
Apparatus
Equipment as a living illustration: the apparatus warms up on hover, and a real record starts spinning on click.
View page → - task
Convert traffic into an offline visit
Listening Room
Booking a listening session — the point where high-check equipment is sold.
View page → - task
Turn the brand style into a product
Commission
Order your own portrait: a brand asset the customer takes home and shows to others.
View page → - task
Give a reason to come back
Journal
Notes on finds and repairs — content one person can maintain in a couple of hours.
View page →
06 · business effect
Why this makes money
Selling without a discount
The site sells curation and belonging, not price. This protects margin.
Conversion into the Listening Room
It's in the showroom that high-check equipment is sold. The site leads there with its entire structure.
A second product from the brand style
Commissioned portraits — a separate revenue stream the store didn't have before.
Cheap maintenance
A new portrait and a note — hours of one person, not a shooting day.
Free distribution
Portraits are forwarded. Every visitor becomes a carrier of the brand.
An asset for the future
In a year — a collection of hundreds of portraits: merch, an in-store exhibition, covers, events.
07 · metrics proposed to the client
What to measure
- Share of returning visits
- Listening Room bookings per month
- Visit-to-equipment-purchase conversion
- Commission inquiries
- Depth of Crate and Gallery views
- Share of sales without discount
- Reposts and mentions of portraits
We started not with a layout, but with a question: what does the customer pay this shop for when the same record is cheaper on a marketplace? The answer was one — for curation and for people. So the site had to sell people, not items.
We worked within strict constraints agreed up front: no photography, no music rights, no right to publish visitors' faces, a small inventory, and one person on content. All of these limitations are resolved by one decision — original illustration.
The style — marker, pastel, grain, acid palette on cream paper — came from the medium itself: vinyl is about noise, ritual, and imperfection, so a perfectly smooth digital interface would contradict what the shop sells. The form follows the medium.
In the end, the site moves the shop off the price battlefield, converts traffic into the Listening Room, and turns every visitor into a brand carrier. And it can be maintained by one person.