How Nine Stones Repositioned Armac Martin for a Global Luxury Market

Armac Martin was founded in 1929 by brass founder Harold McGrail and is now a fourth-generation family business with an award-winning name in luxury interiors. Its cabinet knobs, handles, T-bars and appliance pulls are cast, pressed, polished and finished by hand, all in house, from its own foundry to its press shop. In spring 2022 it received a Queen's Award for Enterprise for International Trade, and a team of more than a hundred now ships its collections worldwide.

The Challenge

The problem was the language, not the product. The website undersold the craftsmanship, spoke more to trade buyers than to design-led specifiers, and lagged the brand's reputation in search.

The Approach

A brand workshop. Before writing anything, Nine Stones ran a workshop with the Armac Martin team to define the brand story, the people they most wanted to reach, and what sets hand-finished British brass apart from mass-market hardware and justifies a premium. From that came a tone of voice, confident and quietly luxurious, and a precise brief to write against.

Website copy. Nine Stones then rewrote the website to do two jobs: speak to design-led buyers in considered rather than salesy language, and rank for the terms those buyers search for. SEO best practice shaped the structure without overriding the brand's tone.

The Outcome

Armac Martin now has a website and brand guidelines that reflect what it makes, with copy its sales team is proud to point prospects to. Both are built to support its growing international client base.