Warmteservice supplies heating, sanitary and roofing materials from 86 branches across the Netherlands, selling to professional installers and to the people who walk in off the street.
In 2022 they asked for a refresh of their digital landscape - what it looked like, how it worked, and what it said about them. One thing was settled before anything else started. The old flame mascot had to go.
There was a clear wish for change and no agreed picture of what change meant. That’s the point at which a design team either guesses or asks.
And a mascot isn’t only a drawing. Removing it meant deciding what the company would look like with no character standing in for it - a decision that couldn’t be made in a design tool.
A colleague and I started with workshops rather than screens. Branding and discovery sessions with the people who run the business, to establish what they needed, what they wanted, and what they were prepared to leave behind.
The design came out of those rooms, and then we built it - as a design system rather than a set of pages, so the decisions would hold once they were out of our hands.
The site has since been recognised as one of the most customer-friendly.
The work did not stop there. Warmteservice is a client I still speak to regularly about conversion, and the design system is being brought up to date with what Figma can now do.
