With StepAlong, Hardicraft created a secure, multilingual online instruction platform, cutting costs and enabling market expansion.
Hardicraft, a Dutch arts and crafts company based in the Netherlands, is one of Europe’s leading providers of crochet and knitting kits. They retail under their own brand while also offering private-label products for other organizations.
StepAlong met Marijke Boone, Hardicraft’s CEO and founder, at the Creativeworld 2024 trade fair in Frankfurt. During the event, Marijke explained Hardicraft’s specific challenges with their product instructions, especially as the company expanded its presence in international markets.
The Challenges
Hardicraft’s kit packaging is highly compact, making it difficult to include instructions in multiple languages. As more languages were added, the risk of errors increased. Furthermore, Hardicraft’s manufacturing and distribution processes didn’t allow for easy replacement of printed instructions when errors were found.
For years, Hardicraft operated with instructions in four languages. However, scaling up to 10 languages brought not only higher costs but also structural challenges in creating, translating, and managing the growing volume of content.
Hardicraft considered replacing their printed instructions with a QR code, but they wanted to avoid hosting content on the open internet due to concerns about plagiarism, a common issue in the crochet and knitting community. Additionally, while they were open to digital instructions, they recognized that many of their customers preferred PDFs. Marijke was adamant that she did not want to maintain two separate systems for creating instructions.
The Solution
With StepAlong’s implementation, Hardicraft quickly transformed their compact printed PDFs into visually appealing online instructions available in 10 languages.
Initially, Hardicraft chose to use the StepAlong Instruction Center rather than integrating the instructions into their main website. This decision proved valuable, as it decoupled the instruction platform from their ongoing website redesign, reducing dependencies in the instruction creation process.
The StepAlong team collaborated closely with Hardicraft to address translation challenges posed by the specific technical languages of knitting and crochet. By fine-tuning our translation tool, Hardicraft were able to reduce their translation costs by approximately 80% in one shot.
Having instructions online also enabled Hardicraft to incorporate customer feedback and corrections swiftly—a common practice among engaged crocheters and knitters.
To combat plagiarism, StepAlong developed functionality allowing Hardicraft to assign unique access codes for each instruction. These codes are printed alongside the QR code on the packaging, ensuring secure access to the instructions.
Enhancing the PDF Experience
Recognizing the continued demand for PDFs, but with the base of strong online instructions, StepAlong rethought this format. By removing the need to include every language in a single PDF, we could focus on creating PDFs with larger text and bigger images, improving usability for end users and introducing functionality to generate PDFs directly from the online instructions, eliminating the need for separate PDF creation software.
GPSR and EAA Compliance Without Breaking a Sweat
When Hardicraft met with StepAlong, the new GPSR and EAA regulations were not top of mind. However, since implementing StepAlong, they can now easily ensure compliance with these regulatory standards without added effort.
Marijke commented on the results of implementing StepAlong:
“Our instructions are an integral part of our product offering, and they must be of high quality and accessible in different formats and languages. StepAlong has allowed us to improve the quality of our instructions and implement a process that enables us to enter new markets efficiently and with minimal friction.”
You can see the StepAlong-powered Hardicraft Instruction Hub at instructions.hardicraft.com, please use the form below to request a demo to see how StepAlong can transform your product instructions