Royal Talens delivers a digital platform for creative customers

Royal Talens is a Dutch company located in Apeldoorn that specialises in art materials. Dating back to 1899, the business produces and markets its own products as well as commercialising other licensed brands such as Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Bruynzeel. Steeped in history, they are one of the most recognisable fine arts brands in the world.

Royal Talens wanted to develop a new digital experience for the business and a customer portal that better reflects the nature of the organization. Royal Talens most known for its iconic brands such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh and the product ranges it offers. The new digital offering needed to focus not only on the iconic brands, but also Royal Talens as a business in its own right. The digital experience platform needed to be a valuable resource for all of its customers from professional artists, to creative hobbyists, and even school children.

Royal Talens required a best-in-class content management platform to deliver bespoke content from the technical advisors at Royal Talens, pulled from their own experiences or current trends in the art world. Royal Talens wanted this content to spark creativity and empower its visitors because it is insightful and an educational read.

Optimizely Content Cloud solution was chosen for the project. Its core CMS features and functionality as well as advanced tools for personalization, recommendations and analytics helped to create a website and customer portal that better reflects both its retailers and customers. The elastic scalability inclusive to the platform enables Royal Talens' brand to grow seamlessly with their international growth.

The platform also has all the digital tools Royal Talens need, at their disposal. They adapt content depending on the type of visitor. For example, if a visitor starts looking at oil paint, they will need plenty more information and data on the products offered. The higher the quality, the higher the difficulty and so the more explanation needed.  Royal Talens acknowledge this by deploying easy-to-follow, step-by-step plans for hobbyists and semi-professional artists.

Optimizely helped Royal Talens achieve a versatile customer portal that better reflects its business. The company is now able to control a steady flow of high-quality content, deliver compelling content experiences for its customers all while increasing collaboration with its customers that are at the heart of everything that’s produced by the brands within Royal Talens. The internal team have been empowered to create engaging content, within a controlled and centralised environment that’s very much on brand and speaks to a wide range of consumers that use Royal Talens portfolio of products. The team have also increased productivity internally by using the tools within workflow to help manage content projects.

Given their growing distribution network, Royal Talens have decided not to ''Bypass the retailer''.They have taken a conscious decision that they will not sell to end consumers.

Further personalization of content is the next major priority on Royal Talens’ technology road map. It hopes to improve how it speaks directly to individuals within the creative space with tailored content and would like to have an even better and deeper relationship and understanding of its customers’ requirements. The next step is to create a highly responsive site with the ability to change content depending on the user group. Part of this journey is working with Optimizely’s CMS powerful web capabilities to explore how CMS and content can collaborate for the future.