The Brief
A new experience that needed its own voice.
Cotton Works in Wigan is not a single venue. It is a destination with a growing family of brands and experiences, and it needed a social entertainment proposition that could stand on its own feet and pull a weekend crowd in its own right. The Heaton Group leadership knew what they wanted the experience to feel like. They needed a brand to match.
The brief was to create Factory Floor as a distinct, consumer-facing brand with its own identity, its own voice and its own place in the market. Not a sub-line of the parent group. A destination within a destination, confident enough to be chosen on its own terms, and clear enough to still belong to the Cotton Works ecosystem.
The Process
Built to be chosen.
Factory Floor was built from the positioning out. Every creative decision followed a commercial one. Who is this for, what do they want from a night out, and what will make them pick this over the twenty other places competing for the same evening.
Positioning & Proposition
Defined Factory Floor as the ultimate social playground: drinks cold, vibes hot, games that get serious. A positioning built for group bookings, weekend occasions and the moments people want to tell their friends about later. A specific audience, a specific mood, a specific promise.
Name & Identity
Developed the Factory Floor name, visual identity and tone of voice as a coherent system. A dark, high-contrast nightclub aesthetic grounded in a confident, youth-leaning colour palette and a typographic treatment designed to cut through on social and out of home. Irreverent without trying too hard.
Tone of Voice
A voice that sounds like the venue. Direct, warm, a little cheeky. Built to carry across web, social, door signage, group booking comms and party collateral without ever losing the mood. A real tone, written down, so the internal team could produce content without re-inventing it every week.
Launch-Ready Brand Package
A full brand package handed to the internal team: logo system, colour, type, imagery direction, tone guidance and core messaging. Enough to launch, enough to extend, enough to let the venue be run without an agency in the loop for every decision.
Rooftop Bar
An exclusive members proposition. Still to be revealed.
Alongside Factory Floor, Stancia developed the brand and commercial structure for the upcoming Rooftop Bar at Cotton Works. Positioned as an exclusive members experience above the playground below, Rooftop Bar is a deliberate counterpoint: quieter, more considered, and reserved for a defined audience. Full details of the brand identity, members proposition and pricing are still to be revealed at launch.
The Result
A brand that belongs on the door.
Factory Floor launched as a distinct consumer brand with its own identity, voice and market position. It belongs inside the Cotton Works destination without depending on the parent group for recognition, and it is built to be run by the internal team without constant agency input. The website, the door, the social feed and the booking journey all speak in the same voice because the brand is a system, not a logo.
The companion work on Rooftop Bar gives Cotton Works a second brand ready to launch, already positioned, already priced and already differentiated from its neighbour downstairs. Two brands under one roof, pulling different audiences, telling one coherent story about what Cotton Works is for.
“Stancia built Factory Floor into a brand that could hold its own on any door in any city. Then they did the strategic work for Rooftop Bar that means when we launch, the hard decisions are already made.”
Heaton Group Leadership