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Ilkka Väyrynen
CEO / AD
0400 981 596
ilkka@adkioski.com
Kursulainen
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Taking a Family Bakery Online
Kursulainen's bakery products hold a near cult status among both past and present residents of Lapland. When tasked with redesigning the company's website in 2017, we decided to do something unprecedented in the bakery industry: establish a nationwide online store.
Many considered the idea of an online bakery store to be crazy, but Kursulainen is no ordinary player in its field. With products baked using traditional Kursulainen family recipes, there’s a demand for them beyond the bakery’s immediate distribution area. Kursulainen’s kampanisut (pastries), barley crisps, and the famously known rye granule bread, “Erittäin sallaisena” (Even Saltier), are sought-after souvenirs from Lapland, with some of the most enthusiastic fans ordering them from the bakery to as far as Central Europe for years.
Goal to Find New Customers and Serve Existing Ones Better
“The handling of orders has become easier, and sales have become more consistent. Additionally, we have gained many new customers from all over Finland.”The online store was seen by Kursulainen as part of its digitization efforts to support its business operations in the future. Previously, customer orders were handled one by one based on emails or phone calls. With the online store, order processing would be much easier for all parties involved. Since products had already been delivered to customers in packages, there was no need to start from scratch with supply chain planning. Payment transactions were handled much more efficiently than individual orders, and test packages even arrived faster than anticipated.
The goal of the online store was also to gain a competitive advantage in an industry facing changes, where the bakery sales of large supermarkets have taken a portion of the sales from small local bakeries. Through the online store, Kursulainen aimed to reach new customers in more locations and increase sales to existing ones.
Technical Choices Ensure Security and User-Friendliness
Serving consumers online requires a robust technical foundation to ensure usability and security from both the customer’s and the seller’s perspectives. Kursulainen’s online store was built using the WordPress content management system and its WooCommerce plugin. Both are based on open-source code and are leaders in their respective fields – WordPress being the most popular content management system on the internet and WooCommerce the most widely used e-commerce platform. The actively developing open-source community thus ensures a secure future for Kursulainen’s online store, which is not tied to closed, quickly outdated technology or subject to the whims of individual vendors, not even those who developed the site.
Enhancing Brand Identity Alongside the Online Store
The familiar blue and yellow color scheme of the packaging was brought into the website’s design. Similarly, the typographic style of the site – including headline fonts and text links – and the graphical elements were chosen to respect existing materials while updating the look to be more modern and web-friendly. The overall presentation was enhanced with custom icons designed specifically for the site and, most prominently, with product images that suit Kursulainen’s spirit and taste.
Comprehensive product descriptions were designed for the online store, executed with care from styling the products to processing the images. The images were intended to be rustic yet fresh, fitting for the classic cult breads. Each product category received its own distinctive look in the images while maintaining a carefully unified overall appearance.
Courage Paid Off
Order processing became easier – Sales became more regular – The customer base expanded nationwide
Sometimes it pays to boldly go where others haven’t thought of going yet. With Kursulainen’s online store, we achieved precisely the goals we were aiming for. Order processing became easier, sales became more regular, and we gained many new customers from all over Finland. It’s no wonder, because Kursulainen’s online store prominently offers delicacies that can’t be found everywhere. Throughout the process, the Kiska team developed their own favorites: one fell in love with the pastries, and even a graphics professional usually immune to the results of their work ended up bringing Kursulainen’s sourdough home.
