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Patina Rentals, New York City, est. 2012

Client work / Case study

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Patina

Founder / Client
Corrin Arasa
Engagement
Ongoing strategic and activation support
Project
The Stretch: Brand and Business Reimagining

How do you make a successful business feel exciting again, and more valuable than the category it helped create?

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Design by WOB Studio Build by Haley Withers
  1. Woman walks through a living room filled with artwork and plants

    Patina. NYC

    01

    The Starting Point

    Patina had already built serious credibility and scale.
    A design-led furniture rental and events business in New York and the Hamptons, it had worked with clients including Goop, the Met Gala and Adweek.
    For years, its edge had been obvious. Better taste. Better detail. A stronger design sensibility than the traditional rental market.
    Then the category caught up.
    Competitors borrowed the same visual codes. Design-led rental was no longer distinctive in itself. The brand no longer reflected the calibre of the business, and growth increasingly meant doing more of the same.
    Corrin had built something successful. She’d also run out of room to play.
  2. Book cover reads “The new era of gathering”

    Patina. NYC

    02

    What We Saw

    The opportunity was not to become a more premium version of furniture rental. Patina had already earned permission to occupy a much bigger space.
    The interesting territory sat around the reason the furniture existed in the first place: bringing people together.
    We reframed the business around The New Era of Gathering, giving Patina a broader cultural role and a point of view on how, why and where people gather now.
    That shifted the competitive frame completely.
    Instead of being judged against other rental companies on inventory, aesthetics and service, Patina could start leading a much bigger conversation around gathering, hospitality, experience and human connection.
  3. The new era of gathering: The future of how we host, meet and connect

    Patina. NYC

    03

    The Big Move

    From design-led furniture rental to a brand built around The New Era of Gathering.
    The idea gave the business permission to stretch far beyond the original category while still feeling completely credible.
    Furniture rental remained an important part of the model, but no longer had to define the ceiling of the business.
    The strategy opened up higher-value event consultancy, new gathering formats, original furniture design, partnerships and a more strategic role with clients.
    We rebuilt the brand around that bigger idea, shaping the positioning, commercial opportunities, messaging and go-to-market direction before briefing the next phase of creative work.
    The goal was never to bolt on more services. It was to make the commercial model follow the bigger opportunity.
Three women sit together and talk in a garden

03

What We Built

We repositioned Patina around that higher-value territory, evolved the commercial model, shaped pricing and event strategy, selected and briefed the design partner, oversaw the rebrand and created the website, messaging, Instagram and go-to-market strategy.

The aim was coherence.

Every part of the business needed to express the same bigger idea.

04

What It Unlocked

Patina now has a clearer role in a crowded market, a stronger platform for growth and far more room to evolve than furniture rental alone could ever provide.
The work created a strategic territory broad enough to support new products, higher-value advisory work, collaborations and future innovation without requiring the business to reinvent itself every time.
It also reopened a more personal question for Corrin: what did she want to build next?
That eventually led into a separate Day One project with The Wild Ones, creating the strategy for an entirely new business beyond Patina.

“Patina’s story was always strong. We just didn’t know how to tell it. We were doing great work behind the scenes, but from the outside we looked and sounded too much like everyone else. We knew what made us different, we just hadn’t found the language for it. Emma helped us get to the true core of what we offer, sharpen our “why” and bring our past, present and vision for the future together into one clear, compelling story, with a strong voice and visual identity to match. Her work put us on a different plane. She has a rare combination of strategic rigour and creative instinct, and an uncanny ability to find the words for something you’ve been trying to articulate for years. She’s since become a true creative and strategic partner, not only for Patina but for the new ideas, projects and businesses I’m building. I trust her implicitly to help me find the heart of an idea and turn it into something with real shape, direction and possibility.”

Corrin Arasa

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