Case Study

Launch Site

“I could talk about all the creative content, quirky aesthetic decisions and thoughtful brand positioning, but this site worked for me because of its most functional elements. The magnifying tool, where I zoomed in on the material; the plain-speak legal bits; the no-nonsense registration; and the sharing of a design philosophy made it worthy of distinction.” —juror Libby Bawcombe

“So many good things about this site. It was clearly the best e-commerce site submitted because in every detail, the brand and its experience were reinforced by how the site worked, not just how it looked, from the unexpected cursor that greets you on the homepage to the thoughtful and inclusive Model Selector that allows you to pick between Male, Female or All and features all different kinds and shapes of people so you can actually see what this sweater might look like on you. It sucked me in, which, honestly, is hard for any e-commerce site to do these days.” —juror Dan Mall

Overview: If the wasteful practices of the fashion industry continue, then by 2050, fashion will be responsible for 25 percent of the world’s carbon-dioxide budget. Sheep Inc., a “ten-times carbon negative” company, invests money from every sale into environmental projects that will mitigate the carbon impact of each sweater it produces ten times over. A fashion business that goes against the grain deserves an equally revolutionary site, so branding and digital marketing agency Responsive Media NYC created an online platform that takes visitors on a journey, from Sheep Inc.’s brand purpose to the unisex design of its sweaters.

• The horizontally scrolling layout on the desktop version of the site visually represents the revolutionary mission of Sheep Inc. The site switches to a vertical scroll on mobile devices.
• The site was developed with WordPress.
• The website—and the brand itself—garnered write-ups in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wallpaper*, Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar, among many others.

Comments by Responsive Media NYC:
From concept to completion, how long did it take to produce? “The development process took about three months. It was virtually impossible to template the site, as every page is unique. Our solution was to create customizable modules for each type of information that could be mixed and matched, like Legos. Additional challenges were the delivery of visitor-specific targeted content and interfacing with the near field communication chips embedded in the castor bean tags attached to each sweater. A tap of your phone gives you access to the full creation journey, from the farm that the wool came from to the name of the person who hand finished your sweater.”

Did you meet with any out-of-the-ordinary obstacles during development? “Constantly. Everything about this project was out of the ordinary and very customized. It had to scroll horizontally on desktop and vertically on mobile. Additionally, all content was delivered dynamically, using conditional logic to control the delivery of personalized content to each unique visitor.”

Was the topic of the project a new one for you? “It was 100 percent in our wheelhouse. Responsive Media NYC works with
a number of Silicon Valley venture capital firms on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our company was founded with the goal of applying the trade secrets we’ve developed working with Fortune 500 companies and big brands to enable the success of startups, nonprofits and small businesses that are making a difference in the world, like Sheep Inc.”