Brand Refresh Execution

Overview

Laced was repositioning with a more premium brand identity. Every part of the digital experience — product pages, checkout, size selectors, landing pages, navigation, emails, and notifications — needed to reflect the new direction coherently. The challenge was delivering that across multiple surfaces and teams without derailing ongoing product work or damaging conversion in the process.

The problem

Product surfaces were inconsistent: old copy, legacy design patterns, and outdated visual language were mixed together across the experience. The gap between what the brand aspired to and what customers actually saw was wide. This wasn't a case where one team could ship a single update — it required coordinated delivery across design, engineering, and marketing, with a clear component-level plan so nothing was missed and nothing conflicted.

The time constraint was real. Repositioning efforts have a natural urgency: if the brand refresh is announced but the product still looks like the old Laced, the message is undermined. Three months was the target.

What I did

I co-led the initiative with design, taking responsibility for the product and engineering coordination side. I translated the incoming brand guidelines into a component-by-component implementation plan — identifying which UI components needed updating, which required new design work, and which could be deprioritised without affecting the perceived quality of the refresh.

I set up weekly cross-functional alignment sessions to keep design, engineering, and marketing synchronised on timelines, dependencies, and blockers. The recurring risk was that visual changes would interact with underlying platform constraints — spacing, component architecture, responsive behaviour — in ways that required engineering judgment before design could finalise specs. I surfaced those dependencies early.

Systems I built

• Component-level delivery plan: a prioritised list of every UI surface requiring update, with design status, engineering effort estimate, and dependency mapping — so no surface fell through the cracks
• Cross-functional weekly cadence: structured alignment between design, engineering, and marketing that tracked blockers, resolved ambiguity, and maintained shared timelines
• Conversion protection protocol: each surface change was reviewed against baseline conversion metrics before full rollout — brand work shouldn't sacrifice commercial performance
• Phased rollout: highest-visibility surfaces (PDP, checkout, landing pages, navigation) shipped first; secondary surfaces (notifications, emails, edge-case pages) followed once the core brand update was stable

Impact

The full brand refresh shipped in under three months across all major digital surfaces. Design cohesion improved visibly — the gap between brand aspiration and product reality closed. The premium positioning of the marketplace became credible in the product, not just in marketing. Conversion remained stable throughout the rollout.