Creating a name and brand to launch products for a global hair influencer

The Stella Cini success story

We had an amazing opportunity to work with global hair influencer Stella Cini. She approached Valiant to help her launch her own branded products. With a huge global audience across many social media channels, Stella wanted to look at revenue channels that didn’t rely only on social exposure. With her vast knowledge and experience in hair, she wanted to bring to market a range of beautifully designed and packaged hair brushes. They would deliver on style but also lead the way on functionality and ergonomic handling. But first of all we had to find the right name.

Key objectives

Create a relevant and ownable name for Stella’s hair product brand
Design a stylish brand identity to work globally for her audiences
Build brand architecture to leverage the Stella Cini name
Collaborate on the development of the product range colours, styling and details

Design and develop packaging to provide luxury product experience for the customer
Create a gorgeous box opening customer experience
Design and develop a Shopify ecommerce platform
Develop tone of voice for product marketing

How did we name and develop the Stellari brand?

What a privilege to work with hair superstar and sassy business woman, Stella Cini. We loved getting to know her and understand her plans and vision for the future. Having developed a huge global following across social media channels, Stella influences her audiences choices in hair products, styling and in accessories. Now was her time to bring to life her product vision for the future. First things first, we needed a name.

The naming process

We used our proven naming process to explore a few clear avenues. Inspired by Stella’s Maltese roots and her own name we discovered that the word stellar (as in star or star performance) is stellari, in Maltese. So we had a name with a brilliantly appropriate meaning which felt a perfect extension of her personal brand. Introducing Stellari by Stella Cini.

Trademarking your name

Before moving onto the branding in full we started the trademark process. A critical part of naming is getting legal advice on the availability of a name to use across the territories you want to sell in to. Your agency should always do as many desktop searched as possible before it goes to a law form to finalise. This takes 3 months in the UK and longer elsewhere, so should always be built into the process and timelines.

Branding and packaging

With a name agreed, trademarks secured we could develop the brand identity, packaging and tone of voice. The Stellari brand identity is a beautifully balanced, classic logo with the Stella Cini hand drawn signature introduced to give credibility at the launch stage. We also created a roundel using the Stellari S which is engraved into the metal tips of the hair brush handles.

The packaging was developed to give the customer a beautiful unboxing experience capturing Stella’s friendly tone of voice throughout. The initial 3 launch products each have different neutral but sophisticated colourways to differentiate them.

Shopify ecommerce website

With name, branding, packaging design completed and brush production underway we needed to create an ecommerce platform from to sell from. We designed and built a Shopify ecommerce site as an easy to use, scalable online shop that links seamlessly with Stella’s social channels. The vast majority of her global audience use mobile for social and purchase, so the site took a mobile first approach.

If you’d love to take a closer look at Stella’s beautiful brushes, or buy a beautiful gift for someone, you can take a look here

"Thank you for all your help, advice and service throughout the start, process and launch of Stellari. You and the entire team at Valiant have done a superb job at creating my brand and I am so very grateful to have worked with you."

Stella Cini

Deliverables

Develop
Brand guidelines
Brand application
Website

Stellari