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Creating a Stronger Identity For Home Furnishings Retailer Chilli

When Home Furnishing Nordic looked at its portfolio, it became increasingly clear that two of its furniture brands, Chilli and Trademax, were gradually becoming too similar despite different customer groups. This insight led to the decision to completely rebrand Chilli, giving it a more stylish, curated, and modern feel.

Industry

Retail, Home Furnishings


Geography

Sweden

Project scope

UX & design, e-commerce, accessibility

Website

Chilli.se

Solutions

Voyado Elevate, Voyado Engage, Contentsquare, Ninetailed

 

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Despite Chilli and Trademax serving completely different customer needs, the online customer experience no longer reflected those differences. HFN therefore set out to redefine Chilli through a complete brand and digital transformation. The goal was to create a more curated customer experience, strengthen the brand's position, and build a clearer identity for both customers and employees.

In practice, that meant making it effortless to find the right product, modernizing the look and feel, and getting accessibility right from the very first design decision rather than retrofitting it later. Underpinning all of it was a shift toward a data-driven way of working, so the new site could keep improving long after launch.

With the help of Avensia, Chilli undertook a full rebrand: a curated assortment, a calmer and more modern visual identity in beige and brown colors, a new accessible site, and a data-driven way of working. The result is a brand that finally looks and feels like itself.

The Challenge An Ambiguous Audience Reflection

Over time, Chilli and Trademax had begun to converge in both assortment and digital presentation. While Trademax primarily appeals to customers seeking functionality, convenience, and value, Chilli's audience is driven by inspiration, style, and a desire to create a home that reflects a more exclusive feeling.

HFN realized that the experience customers encountered on Chilil no longer fully matched those expectations. However, the challenge was not simply visual. The company needed to clearly define what Chilli should represent, create a more distinct market position, and build an experience that helped customers immediately understand the difference between Chilli and the group's other brands.

A key part of that challenge was the assortment itself. For years, Chilli and Trademax had shared a large number of products, making it difficult to create a unique brand identity for either of the brands.

Main challenges included:

  • Two distinct customer groups being served a near-identical experience across brands.
  • A product range that overlapped almost entirely with Trademax
  • A dated visual identity still carrying echoes of the old orange-red "spicy" Chilli that no longer reflected the brand’s ambition.
  • A site that didn’t make it easy for the design-led customer to find the right products or feel inspired.
  • Accessibility (WCAG) requirements that had not yet been built into the design the way they needed to be.
Quote
We had a vision of what Chili should become. With Avensia's expertise, we were able to turn that vision into a concrete, modern customer experience that truly reflects the brand.
Johanna Falk, Branding & Communications Specialist, HFN Group
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The Solution

A Complete Rebrand

The project to transform Chilli combined brand strategy, UX design, development, accessibility expertise, and assortment curation to create a completely new digital experience.

One of the most important decisions was to actively curate the assortment. Instead of offering the broadest possible range, HFN focused on creating a more relevant and inspiring selection aligned with Chilli's positioning. Products that did not align with the brand vision were removed, creating a clearer, more cohesive customer experience.

Alongside the assortment work, the team developed a new visual identity and customer experience designed to appeal to Chili's style-conscious audience. Other colors, a modern aesthetic, and inspirational content helped create a stronger emotional connection between the brand and its customers.

Avensia worked as an integrated extension of HFN's team throughout the project. By combining HFN's vision for the brand with Avensia's expertise, the teams turned strategic ambitions into a modern, scalable digital experience.

The transformation extended beyond the website itself. When the new Chilli site was launched, the new identity was introduced across all customer touchpoints, creating a unified brand experience across digital channels, campaigns, and communications.

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A New Visual Identity

The rebrand leaned into a warmer, calmer direction: soft beiges leaning toward brown, a cleaner, more modern look that reads as chill rather than spicy. The name stayed but its meaning quietly shifted from heat to ease.

The creative vision came from Chilli’s own team. Avensia’s role was to take that vision and concretize it, pressure-test it, and translate it into a working, modern site.

Designing For Everyone

With digital accessibility now a legal requirement, Chilli wanted to meet WCAG requirements properly from the very start. By incorporating these early in the design process, the Avensia and HFN team ensured that the new experience was both visually appealing and accessible to a wider audience.

Quote
There’s strength in having our own developers close to the business and equal strength in having Avensia, who know the platform inside out and can scale in a way we can’t.
Martin Lesalvia, CTO, HFN Group

A Data-Driven Engine For Conversion

Alongside the rebrand, Chilli adopted a data-driven approach as the default way of working. The process is simple but continuous: collect data on how customers actually behave, form a hypothesis, run an A/B test, measure the results, and either roll out the winning solution or iterate and test again.

That mindset now shapes work across the brands, ensuring the new Chilli website continues to evolve and improve long after launch, rather than remaining static.

The Results A Clearer Position, Internally And Externally

The new Chilli site quickly generated strong engagement both inside and outside the organization.

Since the relaunch, Chilli has a clear position of its own and an experience matched to the customer it set out to serve. The improvements show up across both the brand and the numbers:

  • A distinct, ownable identity with a curated assortment that lives up to customer expectations. Chilli is now clearly differentiated from Trademax and HFN's other brands.

  • Strong external engagement around the rebrand, with a notable uplift across social media, email and other channels.

  • A modern, easy-to-navigate site with accessibility built in from the start, in line with EAA and WCAG requirements

  • A substantial uplift in conversion following launch, supported by the data-driven way of working.

  • Clearer internal alignment around the role of each brand within the HFN portfolio, with teams gaining a better understanding of how Chilli should be positioned and communicated.

Quote
The goal wasn't just to redesign a website. We wanted to create a modern experience we could be proud of, supported by a more relevant assortment and a clearer identity for Chilli.
Martin Lesalvia, CTO, HFN Group

Future Work Rolling Out The Playbook Across Other Brands

The success of the Chilli rebrand has already influenced HFN's broader digital strategy. The platform, customer experience model, and design principles developed for Chilli have become a foundation for further brand development initiatives within the group. The work has already inspired the evolution of HFN Group's brand Trendrum, where elements of the Chilli approach have been reused and adapted. Next in line is to focus on a refresh of Trademax, with the goal of bringing all brands onto a single, modern platform.

At the same time, HFN continues to invest in optimization, data-driven ways of working, customer experience improvements, and stronger brand differentiation across its portfolio. 

About Chilli

Founded in Gothenburg in 2002 as a family business, Chilli has grown into one of Sweden’s leading online destinations for furniture and home furnishings. In 2015, Chilli became part of the BHG Group, one of the Nordic region’s leading e-commerce groups and one of the strongest players in DIY and home furnishings in Europe.

Do you want to learn more about how we helped Chilli build a stronger identity? Get in touch!