Digital design resources

If remodeling or building projects are on the drawing board for the future, this is a good time to put the new tools found on the Acme Brick website to work. With many new products being added to the company’s offerings over the past few months, consumers and building tradesmen needed a convenient way to access the specifications, colors, styles of these products. Digital product brochures, catalogs, case studies, and other building and design resources have now been added to the site dramatically increasing the accessibility of all product offerings. 

While this process of digitizing the Acme product information has been in progress for over 6 months, the pandemic has encouraged an acceleration in the completion of this project. Acme Brick director of marketing, Britt Stokes explained: “With our showrooms temporarily closed, it made sense to step up the pace of improvements on our customer-facing website, adding brochures, new products, and updating technical brochures and information on continuing education courses that architects can request. We are always trying to make it easier for our customers to access information about our products and we believe these new ‘tools’ accomplish this goal.”

By simply hovering the mouse of your computer on the “brochures” navigation tab at the top of the home page of brick.com, a drop-down menu, with all categories will appear. This allows consumers and building trade specialists to access a vast digital storehouse of information, including:

  • Commercial brick offerings by plant
  • Residential brick offerings by plant
  • Information on thinBRIK products
  • Flooring products
  • Architectural case studies
  • Technical digests
  • The pocket guide to brick construction
  • Product catalogs for many other Acme products

For a quick look at the new product information section, just hover your computer mouse over the “brochures” tab.

The Digital Products Section “Keeps It Simple”

The design of this new section is intuitive and therefore easy to use by anyone with any level of digital expertise. However, this elegant simplicity required a great deal of thought, planning and execution in order to better serve customers.

“Acme has a diverse product line offering,” Stokes said. “Although it was challenging to make a large number of catalogs and brochures available with as little searching as possible, we felt this was the perfect time to do this. We also created PDF brochures for all the standard products at our brick plants.”

Because Acme serves the commercial building sector - architects, designers, engineers, builders, and contractors - as well as homeowners, the new digital product information section has been designed with each target market in mind. 

Stokes added, “I think all users of the page will benefit, including our sales representatives who can now direct their clients to the product catalogs and brochures. 

“For those who prefer to discuss projects with a knowledgeable product specialist, Acme’s sales representatives are still out in the field, looking at home and buildings for match jobs, and speaking with customers on the phones to answer any questions and take orders. Whether they are field reps or inside sales reps, these folks can provide tons of information.” 

Digital Brochures Save Time, Money and the Environment

One of the best aspects of a digital product information guide is its capacity to evolve and expand quickly. Plus, Acme has a well-earned reputation as a green” company and presenting information in a digital format saves an enormous amount of natural resources. 

It is estimated that paper accounts for 25 percent of waste in the landfill and 33 percent of municipal waste. About 68 million trees are cut down each year to produce paper and if it is not recycled, the paper ends up in the landfill. In previous times, when ink-on-paper product brochures were the only option, updates, price changes, new variations and anything else related to products took much longer to prepare. Now, these updates take minutes, rather than weeks and they are much easier for consumers to access. Customers benefit from this timely information and our planet has less waste to manage.

“We’ll be continuing to add digital brochures and other materials,” Stokes said. “For example, we added a brand new case study recently of a Brick In Architecture award winner where we spotlight exemplary designs. 

“We’ve also recently incorporated our flooring selections into this resource. This makes it simple for homeowners, designers, and contractors to pick out their flooring without any project timeline delays. Once they know which flooring they are interested in, customers can leverage our flooring calculator.

“These are very exciting times for our company and for our customers. For the first time in our almost 130 years of business, all our product information is digitally available in one spot. This makes it a very sweet spot, especially during these times!”

If you are planning a home improvement project or you need more information on any Acme product, check out the new product information section of Acme Brick.