Hazelnut Hill

Growing a Business

The Verb team was built on categories of expertise – visual creative, text creative, strategy, digital tactician and so on. But we’re grounded through our personal histories and interests. Two of us come from family business backgrounds, all of us love local agriculture and business, and we each find it deeply rewarding to work with high-energy clients who pour their whole selves into a dream. Enter Rachel Henderson of Hazelnut Hill.

Rachel and her husband Ryan have built the business of their dreams: Rachel’s been making candy since she was a young girl and Ryan grew up learning the ropes of a large family farm outside of Eugene. A few years ago, they purchased the Hazelnut Hill business from a retiring couple. The deal included a logo, packaging, loyal customers – and an aging website with low functionality. The couple merged their existing 400 acres with the new additions and pivoted to sell hazelnuts and hazelnut confections directly to customers rather than selling the harvest to a wholesale buyer, as they had in the past. The high, consistent quality of their nuts gave them confidence that once someone tried a Hazelnut Hill nut, they’d be loyal customers – and that proved to be true.

Eventually sales flattened and it became time for the next big step: to build a more contemporary brand, including retail-worthy packaging. For one thing, it was taking too long to work with the old-style packaging and labeling and Rachel was ready to spring for pre-printed bags. This opened the opportunity to freshen the logo, too. The before and after images shown here make the improvements clear. And the time savings from the clunky packaging process freed Rachel’s attention for the next big project: the website.

Our analysis of the existing website showed low SEO performance, navigation troubles and very low conversion to a sale. The new site utilized all the brand work completed as part of the logo and packaging process and spun it into an easy-to-use, easy-to-manage, high-performance custom Squarespace site with integrations for inventory management, eNews and more. And it performed! Traffic grew, conversion rates skyrocketed, and people became repeat buyers thanks to the ease of ordering.

The success of the new tools freed Rachel to return to the commercial-grade kitchen that she dreamt of, and for Ryan to spend his time focused on farm operations. The business continues to grow, and the brand is now being placed at strategic retail locations. A regular eNews program, lively social presence (thanks to Rachel’s skill at curating content), and our ongoing support help to keep the business thriving.