The Allotment helps Quality Furniture Company ask questions

The Allotment has looked to help the Quality Furniture Company reposition as an innovation-led business and has created a Q device containing a hidden question mark to show the company is always “asking questions”.

Quality Furniture Company makes more than 250,000 sofas a year, and supplies to companies including John Lewis, Laura Ashley and DFS.
Following a period of growth QFC approached the Design Council to see how it could improve product design, development and employee engagement.
QFC was seconded to the Design Council’s Designing Demand programme, which made recommendations, one of which was to improve brand perception.

After The Allotment was commissioned it found that customers expectations around product innovation were increasing.
The Allotment says it looked to “bring the brand back to a sense of inspiration that would engage and enthuse everyone involved with the business.”

A new brand proposition, identity and marketing touchpoints needed to be created while retaining the name of the business, known to many as QFC.
The Allotment says the “Quality” in QFC is both a supposition and a given, and so therefore had little meaning.

Instead the consultancy focused on the idea of asking questions, being one of the “key drivers” for innovation.
The Allotment says: “The Q in ‘QFC’ became the question and the big idea for the business. By asking questions the business would continuously deliver better products and in-turn become indispensable to its customers and delight the consumer purchasing the sofa.”

Quality Furniture Company from The Allotment on Vimeo.

A new set of values have been defined – Imagination, Achievement, and Support – and an identity forged, which was launched to employees in the form of a film and a book to show “the power of questions”.

The book features stitched binding and stitched typography. Stitching is also used as a motif across other communications.

There is a new website, signage has been designed for the two QFC manufacturing sites and brand assets include giant Q-shaped sofas.

(Tue, 23 Sep 2014 | By Tom Banks )