Crown Decorating Centres

Simplifying Onboarding, Amplifying Impact

A trusted brand, ready to evolve

With over 178 locations across the UK and Ireland, Crown Decorating Centres (CDCs) have long been a staple for decorators and tradespeople. Their customer onboarding process, though familiar and well-established, relied on paper forms, manual data entry, and physical mailings—methods that had served them well but were increasingly out of step with modern expectations.

Crown recognised the opportunity to modernise without losing the personal touch that defines their brand. Together, we set out to reimagine the onboarding experience from the ground up.

From paper to platform: a transformation in every sense

We partnered with Crown to design and deliver a bespoke, mobile-first onboarding platform that would do more than just streamline admin. It would empower customers, unify systems, and give store teams the tools and data to work smarter.

The new platform aligns seamlessly with Crown’s CRM, databases, and marketing tools. It supports three customer types—Retail, Trade, and Credit—across three regions: Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. Each journey is tailored, intuitive, and designed to reduce drop-off and improve data accuracy.

Key features include:

• A centralised portal for application processing
• Mobile-first design for tradespeople on the go
• Instant discount codes to prompt immediate shopping at account pricing

Winning hearts and minds, online and in-store

This transformation required collaboration at every level. We worked closely with store staff, regional managers, data teams, and credit controllers to ensure the platform aligned with Crown’s workflows and values. Their insights shaped the solution, and their support helped drive adoption across the network.

The result is a platform that feels intuitive and familiar, while delivering powerful new capabilities.

Smarter marketing. Greener operations.

With richer customer data, Crown can now deliver more targeted campaigns and personalised experiences from day one. Stores benefit from more relevant promotions, boosting footfall and loyalty.

The platform also supports Crown’s sustainability goals. By eliminating paper forms, plastic cards, and printed mailings, it has already made significant savings in print and fulfilment costs and reduced waste considerably.

The impact

Since launching in late 2024, the platform has processed tens of thousands of new customers and received enthusiastic feedback from both staff and users. It’s a confident step forward, modernising the customer journey while staying true to Crown’s values.

And it’s future potential cannot be underestimated. By creating a dependable central point of truth, the platform will unify fragmented datasets across channels, giving teams unprecedented visibility into what drives trade engagement. This clarity will enable smarter decision-making, faster pivots, and more targeted messaging, turning gut instinct into data-backed confidence.

By fostering cross-functional collaboration, it has aligned marketing, sales and product teams around a shared understanding of trade data. This shift towards integrated intelligence has become a cornerstone of sustainable growth and long-term category leadership.