FireStudios

Vector Air are a UK based Airgun & Airsoft store, they approached us at the start of April 2020 to develop an entire brand design to kickstart their endorsed company.

We started with a face-to-face meeting (Via Zoom) on how this was going to work and to gain any initial ideas form the clients.

Based on the market research we found that one of the key failings of similar stores is their inability to adapt to the times, opting for a traditional way of selling. This works in principal due to the traditional sport of airgun however, the only companies associated with this sport that develop a good brand identity is that of the manufacturers. We suggested re-working the traditional airgun salesman idea into a company for the new age.

We first started with the name; our first call was to quell the unnecessary need to include a name or location, these choices of qualifiers restrict the brand idea massively... A memorable and relevant name was required.

We looked at current market providers of both airgun and airsoft goods, the discrepancy between that of the airgun world and that of the airsoft one is massive. The Airsoft world has taken off in recent years, surpassing that of airguns and even paintball.

A lot of names appeared with interesting connections such as Viper, Cobra, Pheonix, Defcon, and Wolf to name a new. These are all powerful words, with military connotations and all with less than 3 syllables. This plays to the memorability of the name and the ability to repeat it.

From this, we came back to the clients with a brand design language. We pitched the idea of calling the new business Vector, after the scientific denotation of a direction and speed (the bullet) as well as play on the military side of using the phonetic alphabet designation of Victor to denote the letter V.  We would then add Air to act as a prefix to the words gun and soft as well as to be able to secure a cohesive bank of social media sites.

We were also able to provide a selection of logos for the clients to decide on that made use fo the VA initials whilst sticking to the modern take of the brief.

Once happy with the name and logo we finalised the design and rendered social media packs (Logo, cover images/Backgrounds) and built the social media profiles. We also created the basic email addresses and google business listing.

Initially, the idea was for this company to be online only. However, we discussed the possibility of this becoming a brick-and-mortar site, if this was going to happen, then the site would need to work in tandem with this. After agreeing to the possibility of opening a shop, we began development of the website. Using WIX's partner development system, we created a fully responsive website based on a basic CMS (Content Management System) with a built-in store. This allows the client to manage products, content, users, blogs and contact requests without the need for an on-site developer. We also set up the companies Square Account so they could begin taking sales in-store via the POS (Point-of-sale) system that works with WIX.

Given the new direction of a physical store, we designed apparel, signage and shop materials for the client liaising with printers to arrange for the best print options.

Once products started coming in, we arranged shoot days on-site for their products. Sticking to the modern brief, we settled on a lightbox style image, reinforcing the professionalism and cleanliness of the company. We also undertake specialised social media beauty shots photoshoots for sales purposes as well as promotional videos

Vector Air has now become one of the fastest growing airgun retailers in the UK