How it started
California Closets, an long-established and beloved custom closet and home organization brand, has a passionate customer base of homeowners who hire the company again and again.
But the company wanted to deepen its understanding of the new customer experience and mindset, especially at the earliest stages of their customer journey. What were the tipping point moments and related emotions that spark a customer’s first call to the company? And how can California Closets best find, reach, and and build a relationship with them?
What we did
We began with a scan of emerging consumer and category trends, then moved closer to the customer—interviewing the designers and service liaisons who interact with them every day. This allowed us to understand not only how people were behaving, but how those behaviors felt on both sides of the experience.
Our a-ha moment came during the hypothesis workshop, when we identified a new behavioral segment centered on “emergency” calls—moments when the customer experience was under stress. We built a psychographic persona around this pattern and validated it through a national survey of hundreds of California Closets customers.
Our synthesis revealed new psychographic segments and future opportunity audiences—giving the brand a clear view of how customer mindset and experience intersect, and where to focus CX strategy next.
How it’s going
The psychographic profiles we developed are helping California Closets move from transactional marketing to relationship-driven experience design. The brand now uses these insights to create more intentional and relevant interactions—developing content, offers, and messaging that reflect customers’ real motivations and decision contexts.
The result: customers aren’t “one and done.” Through new brand offerings and positioning informed by our research, California Closets is building lasting relationships and repeat engagement—turning one-time projects into ongoing partnerships.
Since our work in 2021, California Closets has continued to evolve its customer experience strategy. The company’s chief brand officer has publicly stated that the business has grown its top and bottom line by 2.5× since 2021—evidence of the brand’s continued investment in CX, design, and customer understanding.
“I showed the psychographic profiles to one of our designers and she immediately ‘got it’. She told me she recognized them, could name customers who align with them, and that they are ‘spot on’.”
— Samara Toole, Chief Marketing Officer, California Closets
