Stay Home Club was founded in 2012 by Montreal-based designer Olivia Mew. From its humble beginnings operating out of Mew’s basement apartment, the brand has grown to inspire a huge online following. 

Now, it operates out of Mew’s studio in Montreal’s St.Henri neighborhood, selling products online and in retailers all over the world. Mew describes Stay Home Club as a lifestyle brand for people with no life. 

Any merchant looking to foster a strong brand identity can look to Stay Home Club for website design inspiration. Stay Home Club’s target demographic, as you might have guessed from the name, is people who prefer to stay home. 

If your idea of a fun night involves not leaving, you’re part of the club. If you’ve grown tired of cliche portrayals of an imagined, extravagant nightlife, Stay Home Club might just be your kind of brand. 

Stay Home Clubs’ target audience may be narrowly-defined, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have broad appeal. In a world where so many brands try to sell their products with appeals to luxury and social status, Stay Home Club’s refusal sticks out.  

Sometimes, doing the unexpected can be a great way for a brand to get people’s attention. Mew got the idea from the brand from her own experience growing up. 

In high school, she often felt pressured to “go out”. Nothing was considered “cool” about wanting to stay at home and hang with your cats. Suspecting she might not be alone in feeling alienated,  she started developing a brand around this idea. 

It started with the company logo. Designed by Mew, it depicts an illustrated version of herself, surrounded by four, regal-looking cats. The logo has the composition of a traditional coat-of-arms, but the style of art is distinctly modern.

When Mew first posted the logo on her Tumblr, she didn’t expect her followers to have such a positive reaction. It turns out Mew wasn’t alone in the way she felt. Discovering this led her to develop a lifestyle brand uniquely fine-tuned to an often undepicted lifestyle. 

From the beginning, Stay Home Club stood-out. With so much advertising built around the idea that a person needs to go out and live an extravagant lifestyle, Stay Home Club flipped this narrative, and made it cool to stay-in. 

The company got its start selling graphic t-shirts that allowed customers to proudly display their affinity for a quiet night in. From there, it’s expanded to sell home decor, accessories, candles, prints, pins, and more. 

Stay Home Club’s branding works because it’s easy for their target audience to see themselves in the brand. Even the name takes a stand. It can take years for a brand to cultivate a sense of emotional investment from its audience. Stay Home Club did it instantly. 

It’s not hard to see why. Social media feeds are lit-up with artful depictions of the night-life. For people who’ve lived their whole lives being told they need to “go out” to fit in, Stay Home Club is a breath of fresh air. 

Having a “personality” goes a long way for a brand. Not only does it give audiences the ability to see themselves in your brand, but it’s also scalable and adaptable. Starting with a simple concept, it’s easy for a brand to develop and grow into something truly unique as you build layers on top of it. 

With Stay Home Club, the simple concept of a lifestyle brand for people who hate lifestyles can be expanded on, in new and interesting ways without betraying the core values of the brand. Stay Home Club carries this simplicity into their website design. 

The side-bar navigation makes for easy exploration of the products. They’re sorted not just by type, but by designer or theme, giving the customers a customizable shopping experience. 

The easy navigation means that the home-page doesn’t need to be too noisy. Its first offering is the newest collection, followed by more collections with accompanying back-stories. 

The copy on the sections of the home-page offers the stories behind the collections, giving the reader some context behind the products, which helps to build brand loyalty by crafting a mental image of the brand. 

Stay Home Club even offers a service for custom prints, with users able to edit their own characters in Mew’s illustration style within a customization tool. The designs are fun to make and allow customers to relate to the brand on a close, personal level⁠—literally envisioning themselves in the aesthetic of the brand. 

Stay Home Club excels in bringing their customers warmly into their brand. In looking for web design inspiration, Stay Home Club is a textbook example of great brand-development.