Hertog Jan

For the love of beer

The origins of the Hertog Jan Brewery go back a long way to when four brewer friends in Arcen, in the southern Dutch province of Limburg, founded a new steam-driven brewery, which they called – very appropriately – De Vriendschap (The Friendship). At the time they were one of the first breweries to make top-fermented speciality beer, something for which they are still well-known today. The current name was inspired by Jan Primus, who was the Duke of Brabant in the 13th century. He was a real bonvivant with three passions: fighting, women and... beer. In honour of his love of the good things in life, Duke Jan I of Brabant adorns all the brewery’s communications. Ever more beer lovers are discovering the beers of Hertog Jan. With the current interest in beer – particularly speciality beers – the quality of Hertog Jan is valued far and wide, and people are increasingly being drawn to the brewery in Arcen.

The Online Brewery Shop

The eCommerce website of Hertog Jan consisted out of three pages, including one page which had all the products and the possibility to add these to the shopping cart. Therefore, the products of Hertog Jan were not findable through search engines and consumers had difficulties finding the products they were looking for as the website was confusing.

Together with the digital agency SiteSupport I restructured the website, including a brand new home page, product category pages and product pages. With this new look and feel of the website, I also integrated structural changes to the url structure of the website. This included moving from brouwerijwinkel.nl to brouwerijwinkel.hertogjan.nl to the increase findability of the online brand store, and make a clear brand reference to Hertog Jan. The new url structure also incorporated clearer category and product names in the url.

+ 10% revenue growth

Premiumizing the branded clothing collection

The clothing range sold by Hertog Jan did not cohere with the premium brand image the brand has. Therefore, I created together with the brand team a new clothing range with a more premium look and feel. The new clothing range consists out of a t-shirt, polo, sweater, hoodie, vest, windbreaker, cap and hat with sophisticated logo and small details. This new clothing range has been launched in the autumn of 2018 in the brewery store in Arcen and became available on the online brewery store.

Product launches

During my time at Hertog Jan I supported the senior brand managers on the launch of various new beers. I supported on the launch of 2018's limited edition of barrel aged beers named 'Hertog Jan Grand Prestige Vatgerijpt'. And with the introduction of the refreshing beer 'Hertog Jan Enkel' (Single), an easy drinking slightly hopped beer inspired by old abbeys single cross beers.

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The Hertog Jan ® word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV.