Welcome to Our New Website
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We are ecstatic to introduce our new look, version 2.0 of nalatanalata.com.
It has been a long time coming. We have made site improvements here and there since we launched our online store long ago but have known for a while now that it needed a full refresh. Many people were involved in making this happen but, we would be remised to not give our utmost gratitude to our friends at Overhaul Media and Studio Newwork. Without their incredible expertise, tireless effort and tedious attention to detail, we would not be as happy as we are with the results.
Here it is! We hope you enjoy browsing the new features of our site…
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When we developed our original website years ago, it was effective at the time but in many ways, could not scale up with the growth of our company. Also, there were sections where it did not always feel like “us”. For example, we chose our original logo because… well, time ran out! Don’t get me wrong, it was a beloved logo, but due to time pressures it was never truly fully developed. When you start a company, you have so many things going on but, as your business matures, you realize what you do well, what you don’t do well, where you want to be as a business and where you don’t want to be. Whereas initially, we wanted to do everything. Needless to say, we took the last couple of years to reflect on how we want to move forward on sustaining the soul of our company – starting with our new logo, which you can read more about here.
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Our brand category, Nalata Nalata, has moved to the top of the page to highlight a new direction towards expanding our in-house collection. We have had the pleasure to introduce our designs over the years and work on collaborations with artisans and designers that we highly respect. We look forward to continuing the pursuit of mindfully crafting the everyday!
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At the heart of the changes was a desire to make the online experience, which is tech driven by nature, feel more human. Our passion for all things handmade was the personal touch we strived to add, making it our focus to incorporate hand-drawn illustrations throughout the site. All of them are hand drawn by my partner in life and work, Angélique. She combed through years’ worth of images and anecdotes documented during our studio visits in order to authentically represent each designer and artisan in their workspaces through illustration. There are also imagined scenes that integrate our products for each category header. The site has close to 200 illustrations!
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Some of the illustrations are part of a very personal project in the Our Story page. Here we wanted to exercise our dedication to storytelling by creating an autobiographical digital storybook of how Nalata Nalata started. It can be read in chapters and only goes up to our grand opening at 2 Extra Place so far, but we hope to add more in the future as we continue our journey.
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The site is finally mobile optimized to be responsive for handheld devices (I know, welcome to the 21st century, right?). The interface is easier to navigate with improved categories, sort features, and new viewing options: the standard “Product View” and our new “Index View”. Index View offers a way to see information at a glance in a list format. You can now save your “favorites” by creating an Account, making sending wish lists to loved ones easier or workflow amongst team members more efficient for projects. With an Account, you will also find your order history and will be able to checkout quicker.
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We have a new page for Exhibitions. Here you will find listings of upcoming exhibitions, past exhibitions and any current ones that are taking place at our gallery. Click into a listing to read the exhibition statement and to view highlighted products from the featured event.
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We have been updating our Journal for years and, we are the first to admit that it had become so disorganized and difficult to peruse entries – as one friend put it, “it was like a giant stream of consciousness!”. Hopefully, the new Journal categories will make browsing our studio visits, backstories, videos, exhibition recaps and behind-the-scenes happenings a bit more enjoyable. Personally, we know this much-needed cleanup of the Journal will make updating it a more pleasant experience. Since we finally have it organized, we are looking forward to getting back to posting entries consistently, which we are genuinely passionate about.
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Thank you for coming to our online world over the years. We hope these website changes make it more enjoyable to discover all the products and people we love sharing with you. Like we mentioned in the 5th chapter of Our Story, sometimes we get entangled in the daily activities of running our small business that we forget to take a step back and see the bigger picture. This new website was an opening for change as much as it was an opportunity to reflect on our evolution thus far.
Special thank you to all the helping hands and dedicated hearts throughout this endeavour – particularly Matt Janzen, Hitomi Ishigaki, Ryotatsu Tanaka, Ryo Kumazaki, Roman Hermens, Dani Sujin Lee, Hazuki Uno and Vicky Wong.