Arakawa Grip

Technically, Arakawa, “supplies quick-release cable grippers to retail stores and fixture manufacturers, exhibit builders, galleries and museums, and general contractors.” But what they really do is create solutions that show stuff off for their clients. Instead of being another company that sells gripper and cable commodities, we helped Arakawa reposition themselves as providing more than grippers and cables…they provide the hanging solution that is worry-free, easy to adjust, and puts the focus on the object(s) being displayed. Arakawagrip.com focuses on the solutions as the entry way to the web experience.

Beyond making the site look good and share the Arakawa story, the digital brand also needs to show how easy it is to find the right products. By developing a Flash-based interactive product selector which allows customers to search for the right products by a number of different criteria, we made the search experience more useful, dramatically improving the quality of leads coming to the Arakawa sales team as well as reducing the number of support calls on a daily basis.

The technical approach for Arakawa featured developing a dynamic Flash interface and fully customized database with remote administration tools. The Arakawa staff has the ability to update all content on the site, from product information to unique page content. The content management tools that control product pages also solve the problem of how to handle the complex relationships between a vast number of different products by introducing the concept of similar vs. related product listings. Similar products are those that perform a similar task but for a different class of cable or connector, while related products are those used in conjunction to provide complete hanging solutions. This helped in making the product catalog easy to navigate and calling out all of the different parts that go into an Arakawa solution.

The next phase of the web site, slated for later this year, will include the ability for customers to set up accounts and track purchase and browsing histories. There will also be shopping cart type functionality which will further enhance Arakawa’s sales team’s ability to provide even more valuable guidance to larger scale clients moving forward.