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Market context
In 2020, the 'magic of Christmas' industry was valued at over £120bn per year, with Santa&Co owning a significant market share (99%). However, with increased demand and crazy delivery deadlines, HGV driver shortages, Brexit and as the pandemic rolls into its 2nd Christmas and customers still remembering the inevitable delivery disappointments of 2020, Santa&Co was suffering from an increase in non-believers.

Therefore to drive the magic of Christmas and uptake of believers, the company has invested heavily in new technology and sustainability strategies to make Christmas 2021 and beyond the best Christmases ever!

Challenge
While the organisation was seeing strong customer satisfaction, the brand and business model had become antiquated and no longer aligned with CEO Kris Kringle’s values for a better planet.

What’s more, the processes that were put in place several hundred years ago were now a hindrance to delivering a seamless user experience, with the team confident that technology would be the enabler to revitalise the brand.

Santa&Co approached Design by Structure to cut through the noise, understand what was crucial for the business moving forward, and to identify how the brand needed to evolve to remain the market leader - by helping to communicate its proposition, create stand out moments through new tech processes, and to align key values to ensure audience satisfaction moving forward.

Reimagining the magic
Following an extensive discovery process at the North Pole, we analysed every audience interaction and touchpoint, to understand where processes could be improved, retired, or retained.

Replacing the reliance on reindeer-powered logistics, Santa&Co now operates a fully electric fleet of sleighs. Older, reindeer-powered vehicles produced over 52g/km of CO2-equivalent methane, which has now been removed from the atmosphere. The reindeer team has been redeployed to domestic flights in the North Pole.

‘With customers still remembering the delivery disappointments of 2020, we have invested heavily in new tech to make Christmas 2021 and beyond the best Christmases ever.

We approached Design by Structure because they get tech and can deliver our promise (no pun intended)’ - Kris Kringle, Santa&Co, CEO

Sustainability & efficiencies
Swapping coal for perfectly imperfect wonky vegetables, Santa&Co are removing their reliance on fossil fuels. Instead, the vegetables act to reduce the amount of food waste per year as well as encouraging healthier eating, during the Christmas dinner, while still providing a harsh lesson in improving behaviour to those on the naughty list.

Communication channels have also had a total overhaul. Instead of relying on a physical letter posted to the North Pole, creating unnecessary paper wastage and transportation costs, children can now interact with the brand through a real-time, digital portal – Work.Shop – providing Santa&Co with their gift list. With Work.Shop, we introduced machine learning and AI, eliminating the need to check the list twice, improving naughty or nice time efficiencies and reducing elf error.

Finally, we integrated a real-time stock tracker so Santa&Co workers can see exactly how much inventory they have, introducing a Just in Time work method so that new toys are only produced as and when they are needed – eliminating wastage of over 500 million toys per year. From a single platform, Santa&Co workers can see a complete list of customer orders, ensuring that the orders are fulfilled and loaded onto transportation (the back of the sleigh) in time for their overnight delivery on 24th December.