The King Retail Solutions homepage. Click for a larger view to read. We got a new client in Europe within a week of launching the site, who specifically said it was because of the site.

I fought solutions. A lot. I mean seriously. You want one navigation item to be the word, “solutions” and the other to be the word, “integrated”?

The "integrated" section of the KRS website.

As you can see, I lost that battle.

And yes. Solutions. "Hmm, what should I click on here? How about solutions?"

But the site was a winner.

When I took the job, we’d just started re-designing the website with their agency, DeepPlay. Awesome group. They did the design and I did all the copy.

And interviewing the department heads (so I could actually write the copy) turned out to be a great way to get up to speed on the company and the industry quickly.

I also coordinated several other marketing endeavors: brochure writing and printing, sales sheets, PR, and design contest submissions. I even got some of our photos into a coffee table book about grocery store interiors. (I didn’t know they existed either.)

Side story

It was at King that I first learned about search engine optimization. The day after the new site launched, the CEO called me in. He liked some things, disliked a few others. But the reason that the site “utterly fails” was because when he Googled “King,” we didn’t show up on the first page.

” Wait, did you say, ‘King’? The single word ‘king’? Really, the King of England comes up before us? Martin Luther King Jr. comes up before us? Burger King comes up before us? Wow, you’re right, that is really WEIRD. Hey, what happens if you search for ‘grocery interior design’ or ‘grocery interior manufacturing.’ Oh sweet. Front page? Yay us.”

I can be a defensive and snarky SOB at times. I’m just saying.