Speculation
Exploring the “what if”
Experimenting can be fun and productive if you make the time for it. Highly comfortable dealing with ambiguous goals I have had the chance to explore some interesting ideas that have gone lots of different places. Below are slideshows of some projects that were opportunities to investigate a different approach. Not all of them took off but a lot was learned.
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BDG trade show booth
What started as an idea on Monday was pitched priced and in process by Tuesday. Staying flexible while everything was up in the air except the deadline was key in getting this project out the door in record time.
< Check out the slideshow
check out the slideshow
King Swings modeling
Had the good luck to help bring a family run playground company some fresh ideas and to get some of their concepts into a more friendly format. Pulling designs from an engineering heavy software platform into more user friendly formats and brainstorming ideas for Phillies centric playsets. Partnering with a marketing dream team and running some low-res concepts they were able to come up with some fun Phillies sets that were fun for kids and Phanatics.
Burpee flower show booth
When a good friend from the trenches picks up the phone with a tight deadline you know it’s going to be a fun ride. With little run up to the opening date a general idea quickly turned into a kit of parts and a new brand presence for a tried and true gardening company. Lots of partners got this over the line and the outcome was warm and wonderful.
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Augmented Reality DIY.
Exploring easy to use tools as a way to expand in-store visual experience, enhance category offerings, and increase marketing engagement. Starting with some rough prototypes I have been building AR products as an exploration of new possibilities with off the shelf tools.
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Store on Tour
Experimenting with ways to introduce customers to your store experience in markets where you don’t have bricks and mortar a small team worked on building a store from old shipping containers. Partnering with some great vendors and marketing teams this little store hit the road. and made some friends.
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Design services.
Can your in house design team generate revenue? In 2013 with e commerce brands getting into bricks and mortar retail, a small team and I investigated offering our URBN in house store design team as a market facing service. The concept never got approved but given our client list who have since opened storefronts, it would have been great!
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UO x ? fixtures
In the market crash of the early 2008 we looked for ways to partner with small design firms to help them weather the storm. As part of an unlikely brief we commissioned product designers to invent new takes on retail fixtures. We were able to invent some interesting objects and land them in some unlikely locations while also managing to create online content (remember blogs?) for bricks and mortar stores.
Scaled up DIY
A lot of the Urban Outfitters brand focuses on the do-it-yourself look and feel. A few years back we scaled up a small shop in the Philadelphia Navy Yard to do it for a few stores that could not do it themselves, and then a few more, and a few more on top. After awhile our small team scaled up to making over 35,000 units in a year to support the entire North American fleet of stores. Now we have a working strategy to support all stores, trade shows, marketing, and whatever else you can throw in our direction.
(And we have the secret hotline to Home Depot’s lumber supplier).
