The Real Fake Plants

Overview

The Real Fake Plants needed a brand and a store to launch together — not a generic ecommerce template with a logo dropped on top, but an identity and a shopping experience that felt considered from the first visit.

The Problem

Artificial plants are an easy sell in person and a hard sell online — customers can't touch the leaves to check if they look real, and a sterile, big-box ecommerce layout undercuts the one thing the brand needed to prove: that these actually look good in a room. The store had to do the convincing a showroom normally would.

Approach

Brand and product design happened as one track, not two: the visual identity — palette, type, photography direction — was built alongside the browsing and checkout flows, so the store never felt like a template with a brand applied afterward. Early versions went in front of a small pilot group fast, before every product photo or flow was finished, to catch what actually confused people rather than guessing.

What Shipped

A full identity — name, mark, palette, tone — paired with a browsing and checkout experience designed to make artificial plants feel like a considered purchase, not a novelty: clear product photography direction, a browsing structure organised the way people actually shop for plants (by room, by light level, by size), and a checkout flow with nothing left to explain twice.

Outcome

The Real Fake Plants launched — brand and store together — in 10 days, tested with 10–20 pilot users before the public launch to catch friction early.

Reflection

Launching brand and product together, instead of brand-then-build, meant the store's tone and its function never fought each other — the copy, the layout, and the visual identity were making the same argument the whole way through.