Bringing 125 Years of Heritage Online

125 years old, and new to social

Barrow Group have been in business for 125 years, which tells you they are good at adapting, because nothing survives that long by standing still. After Covid, adapting meant going properly digital: a website that matched their standing, and social channels they had, frankly, never had. They needed web design and social media management in Johannesburg, where Barrow work out of Rosebank and Sandton, from a partner like ThinkStory who could do both and keep doing them. A century-old company deserves a digital presence that looks its age in the good sense: established, not old.

• A heritage brand with a website that no longer matched it
• Two distinct divisions, Properties and Construction, under one name
• No social presence at all, in a market that now expects one

Two divisions, one company, one website

Barrow is really two businesses under one name: Barrow Properties and Barrow Construction, each with its own clients and its own story. The old site blurred them. We rebuilt it on Webflow with dedicated room for each division, so a property investor and a construction client each land somewhere built for them, without the company feeling split in two. One brand, one site, two clear front doors. A visitor should never have to work out which Barrow they are dealing with, and the split site answers that instantly.

Building the channels from nothing

The social side started from zero: no channels, no followers, no habit of posting. We built Barrow's presence from nothing across Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google, and worked out what a 125-year-old property and construction group should actually sound like on a feed, professional, but human enough to be worth following. For a company that had never done this, the hard part was not the platforms; it was finding a voice that fit the brand.

Two years of running them

This was never a launch-and-leave job. We have run Barrow's channels for two years now, posting, reporting and adjusting based on what actually performs rather than guessing. That continuity is the point: social only works when someone keeps showing up, and a heritage brand especially cannot afford to start a channel and then go quiet. Two years on, we are still the team behind the accounts. Consistency, not virality, is what a business like this needs, and consistency only comes from showing up.

Where a century-old brand goes next

An established business starting on social does not need to chase trends; it needs to show up consistently in its own voice, which is exactly what we built for Barrow. The website gives Properties and Construction each a proper home, the channels give a 125-year-old brand a current one, and both are set up to keep going. After 125 years, Barrow is as comfortable on a feed as they are on a building site. The plan from here is simple: keep both the site and the channels current.

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