Digital · Ecommerce · B2B · 2026
Empee Textiles
Reimagining a 30-year wholesale textile business for modern B2B commerce.
- Role
- Digital design · ecommerce UX · brand identity · customer strategy
- Industry
- Wholesale Textiles · B2B
- Year
- 2026
- Location
- United Kingdom
Empee Textiles had three decades of established trade relationships — but none of it showed up online. Buyers who had been reordering the same linens and canvases for years were still shopping a flat catalogue with no memory of who they were.
I combined a visual identity evolution with a rethink of the B2B ecommerce experience. Rather than designing a conventional online fabric catalogue, the experience was considered around the different ways wholesale customers actually buy.
The challenge
A VIP account, a regular purchaser, a dormant customer and a new prospect should not all experience exactly the same store.
The digital system therefore needed to understand different customer behaviours while still presenting one coherent brand.
01
Customer experience
Five customers, quietly.
Wholesale doesn't have one customer — it has five, and they want almost nothing in common. I designed the system first: what each segment sees on login, what their dashboard prioritises, and what brings them back.
VIP
High-volume, long-standing — priority access and bulk-order tooling.
Regular purchaser
Consistent order patterns — speed and template reordering above all else.
Occasional purchaser
Seasonal or project-based — responds to timing, not urgency.
Dormant account
Quiet for 6+ months — still an active business, needs a reason back in.
New prospect
Right profile, no relationship yet — needs education before a catalogue.
02
Ecommerce UX
Changes that matter more than they look.
- One-click reordering for standing orders
- Saved order templates & quick-order grids
- Product cards surfacing GSM, MOQ and composition
- Category-led navigation — Linen, Silk, Wool, Cotton, Velvet, Denim
- Mobile-first purchasing, built for the loading dock
03
Identity
Heritage, corrected.
The identity was pulled back toward the heritage of the textile house rather than introducing an unrelated aesthetic. Cream and warm ink as the base, rust and deep olive doing the real work, sage and tan held back as detail — a register closer to a considered English tailoring house than a template fabric store.
Palette development — from the banner-led direction to the heritage-weighted system
CRM + retention
The ecosystem extends beyond the website: segmented Klaviyo email and SMS journeys keyed to each customer group — reorder reminders timed to historical purchase cycles, win-back sequences for dormant accounts — and behavioural analytics through Lucky Orange, so decisions keep being made from evidence after handover.
Selected deliverables
- Shopify B2B experience
- Customer segmentation
- Account dashboards
- Ecommerce UX
- Brand identity
- Product information system
- Klaviyo email & SMS journeys
- Behavioural analytics framework