Behind the Launch: A Chat with Antonia Wordie on Sanderson Design Group's New Website Launches

The secret is out! We're excited to share that the brand-new Sanderson Design Group Trade Site is now live!

This project has been an inspiring collaboration, and we want to celebrate the incredible vision and leadership of the Sanderson Design Group team. From the outset, their ambition was clear: to create a trade platform that not only elevates the digital experience but also makes doing business smarter, simpler, and more inspiring for their customers.

Our role at Tom&Co was to bring that vision to life, crafting a seamless user journey, building smarter tools, and ensuring the platform reflects the prestige of Sanderson's portfolio of luxury British brands. The result is an evolved, customer-first platform with streamlined ordering, trade and client pricing views, and intuitive access to collections across all brands. It's an omnichannel experience that connects every touchpoint, designed to support the way Sanderson's customers work and help them grow their businesses.

We're proud to have partnered with such a forward-thinking team, and we can't wait to see how this platform supports Sanderson's ongoing digital innovation journey. 🎨

We caught up with Antonia Wordie, Ecommerce Manager for Sanderson Design Group, shortly after the exciting launch of their new trade site and the launch of the Harlequin D2C site. In this Q&A, Antonia shares the inspiration behind this major digital transformation, the new features their B2B customers are already loving, and a glimpse into the future of their iconic brands.

India, our marketing manager, sat down with Antonia to get the full scoop (and we're thrilled Antonia was our first interview "victim"!).

Watch the Interview

Q&A: The Future of Digital Design with Sanderson Design Group

India Claydon: The new Sanderson Design Group trade site has just launched. Can you tell us what inspired this project in the first place for Sanderson Design Group?

Antonia Wordie: Absolutely. The old trade site was incredibly functional—it was essentially a one-screen platform where customers would log on, type in a SKU code, and order the sample or product they needed. We've completely flipped that on its head and created a much more visual and inspirational experience for our trade customers. Now, they can browse products, get a little bit of inspiration from the brands themselves, and explore across the multiple brands they have access to within their account. Since Sanderson Design Group has six brands beneath the design group, a customer with access to all six can now browse all of them in one hub.

India Claydon: That's amazing. So, with six iconic brands under one roof, how does Sanderson strike the balance between creating a unified experience whilst letting each brand's personality shine?

Antonia Wordie: That was a huge focus. Each brand is incredibly different in terms of personality. It was a really collaborative approach between the Tom&Co and Sanderson teams, involving each of the brand managers and designers in workshops with our UX designers.

We used best-practice processes from a UX perspective to bring the brand vision and identity to life. A practical example is the browse-by-brand functionality. Each brand has its own dedicated landing page on the trade site, giving it an opportunity to showcase its USPs and show some identity. If you click on Harlequin, it would be incredibly different to Zoffany, for example, and you really do feel that as you're going through the site.

India Claydon: So, how does the new trade site transform the customer journey compared to what they had before?

Antonia Wordie: It completely shifts from a purely functional space to an inspirational platform. Customers now land on a more inspirational homepage where the Sanderson team can highlight certain collections or new launches.

Customers have various ways to shop now. They can still search if they have a specific product they're looking for, but they can also browse all the different products across all the brands in one place—for example, looking for blue fabrics regardless of the brand. Or, if they prefer, they can still shop specifically by brand, like going straight into a specific Harlequin brand collection. We want to offer a way of searching that matches how each customer likes to browse and shop.

India Claydon: Tom&Co has a lot of experience with B2B brands like LeMieux and Topps Tiles. What new tools or features do you think the trade customers are going to be most excited about with the launch?

Antonia Wordie: I think above all, customers are going to be most excited that they don't need to be leaving the platform to research the products anymore. The old trade site had no product pages or details, so customers had to visit external sample sites to research and then return to the platform to make their purchase.

Now, they don't need to leave the platform. They've got all of the inspirational imagery as well as all the functional product features and details and specifications all in one place. We've already had some really positive feedback that they don't have to work across six different platforms all at once.

Another huge benefit is that the trade site can now be brought to the client table. We have the opportunity to toggle off trade pricing. Interior designers, for instance, can switch on or off the view of the trade pricing so they might not want their customer to see what the trade price is.

India Claydon: One of the project's goals was to make the business smarter, simpler, and more inspiring. What other additions are making the platform smarter?

Antonia Wordie: I think we covered a lot of that, but one of the things that's quite exciting about the new platform is the use of AI. We've launched with AI-powered search and product recommendations. I'm excited to see how the platform becomes much more intelligent the more and more people actually use it.

There's also a real opportunity to upsell and cross-sell between brands. Before, a customer might not have even known all six brands that are available. Now, if they're searching for a Clark and Clark fabric, they might stumble across a Sanderson fabric that they actually end up preferring, providing an opportunity to upsell.

India Claydon: We've got the launches of the direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites for Harlequin and Sanderson soon, followed by Zoffany and Clarke & Clarke coming up soon in December. How will these sites complement the trade site we've just launched?

Antonia Wordie: The D2C sites are unbelievably exciting for Sanderson because they've actually not sold directly to the consumer before with the Harlequin and Sanderson sites. This gives us the opportunity to own the customer journey. Whether a customer feels a fabric or sees a wallpaper in real life, or visits the website, being able to kind of own that whole omni-channel experience is going to be really exciting.

India Claydon: From a customer perspective, what can design lovers expect when they see these new B2C sites, and how will it feel different from the trade platform?

Antonia Wordie: The consumer sites are a much more consumer-focused site. There's definitely more space for inspiration and the whole idea is to be able to guide you through purchases and design experiences that perhaps you're less well-versed in versus a trade customer.

For example, we've got a really nice blog section that we're building out with "how-to" guides, like how to hang wallpaper. We want to guide them through the journey from start to finish. Harlequin, specifically, prides itself on being the master of colour and creating these colour palettes for customers. They're taking the hard work out of it by creating these mood boards that you can sort of lift and take straight into your home.

India Claydon: These launches feel like a big milestone in the Sanderson Design Group digital journey. What does this moment say about the company's wider vision for innovation?

Antonia Wordie: It's a huge step for the brand, particularly with the D2C side of things. It's exciting to be able to bring them into the digital world and sort of be able to look forward in the future. Now that we've launched the sites, we're all getting really excited about what comes next in terms of future optimisations, where we can use AI more, and driving the digital transformation project for them.

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