Südhang Weine

Südhang case study

Cover of Südhang’s “13 Proposals for a new wine culture”

Over 5 years ago the Swiss wine retail and distribution brand Südhang asked us to help them build a Brand. After researching, workshoping and –repeatedly-testing the product, we could set its basic foundations, develop its core messages and design a complete identity platform.

A few years later, Südhang expanded to Zürich and into the social networks.

It was the right time to rebuild the corporate site and e-store.

The value proposition:

Difficult wines for those still resisting the mainstream

The Südhang universe (not only the brand and the company’s culture, but also their marketing and product strategy) spins around 3 basic axes: quality at fair prices, local rarities and uncommercial honesty. From the flyer you receive at home until the escargots accompanying the infrequent wine you’ve been personally recommended to taste, everything around Südhang will be strangely cool and weirdly ambrosial. But above all things, you can be sure it was recommended to you, written or designed for you with a (dangerously) uncommercial spirit of brutal honesty.

No more middle class white couples sipping a Cabernet Sauvignon in the sunset, nor bearded hipsters instagramming their bio white wine. “Advertising lies. Wine does not” was the street sign we produced for them after our brand workshop and, since then, things just got weirder.

The concept:

Wait. Was that a Pin-up with Warhol’s famous banana?

What it takes to sell a wine? 🤔

First, a good wine. Second, a glib tongue. The artful persuasion of the wine dealer makes 50% of the sale, and most of it is made of metaphors that jog down your sensory channels, making your mouth water as you visualize drinkable chestnut🌰 forests shaded by a thick vegetation of wild berries and fresh lemons🍋.

The wine was there, what we needed now were the allegories to sell it online.

We started by creating lists of wine metaphors and then we prepared the images that could identify those ideas. “Lemon” and “Strawberries” weren’t a problem, but how would you say “balanced with rounded tannins” in a single picture?

We had to take difficult decisions based, precisely, on the brand’s character to describe certain essences, and that’s why you might see The Velvet Underground’s banana or a Pin-up crossing your screen if you choose a certain wine.

The design and the navigation:

Shaking classified ads and a logical filter

The decision to use such and editorial layout as the one of a newspaper classified ads section also had to do with the Brand. The company always prioritized the editorial medium, the editorial design and the editorial style (literary long copys and an overall vintage narrative) in all its communication efforts. Our assignment was to extend the brand to the Internet, making it recognizable to its usual customers without abruptly interrupting that brand narrative,

Sarah used rectangular cards to show a preview of the content element, and then placed them randomly onto the chequered grid.

No global menu. No footer. Just cards beautifully divided in three columns and a header identifying the type of content (wine, event, post…), all of which would momentarily shake as the user moused over.

The navigations were solved using a rather huge lateral menu overlapping half of the page, and up to eight category filters on the search function would immediately take you to the wine you were looking for.

Detail of the Magazine

Up to eight category filters on the search function would immediately take you to the wine you were looking for.

The navigations were solved using a rather huge lateral menu overlapping half of the page,

The technical challenge:

Importing from a FileMaker packed with data

The real hack was to import the data from the physical shop, still running on a FileMaker, to the new on-line platform, and then make it work along with the new on-line system. The data from the FileMaker included purchase orders, stock and product information.

To achieve that, we developed several interfaces which would result in a new integrated system capable to manage both, the physical and the online stores at the same time. Finally, we developed a specific Content Management System to update the news, the events and the recipes that Südhang regularly posts on the website.

Technical specifications

CMS: Typo 3, version 7.3

Public and private e-shop: Typo 3 Extension Developing Frame (Extbase)

Payment: PostFinance Professional

Languages: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Typo 3, Extbase, PHP, MySQL