Rebuilding a 40-year-old outdoor brand for a digital-first generation
Client
Northwind Outfitters
Year
2025
Services
Brand Identity, Web Design, E-commerce
The problem
Northwind's identity hadn't changed since 1987. Their catalog, site, and in-store signage all told a different story, and conversion had fallen every year for five years running as customers moved to competitors with clearer, more confident brands.
The process
Brand audit & positioning
Two weeks embedded with the merchandising and retail teams to find what was actually distinctive — durability testing, a lifetime repair program — that the brand had never actually said out loud.
Identity system
A new wordmark built around a single trail-marker glyph, a warm-neutral palette pulled from raw canvas and topographic maps, and a type system built to hold up on a tent tag or a billboard.
Modular commerce build
A component-driven storefront so the in-house team could launch new collections without engineering support, with product photography direction that unified 200+ SKUs shot over a decade.
The result
Nine months after relaunch, Northwind's e-commerce conversion rate had more than doubled and average order value grew alongside it — driven largely by a bundling flow the new component system made possible in a single sprint.
+64%
Conversion rate
3.2×
Average order value
41%
Faster page load
Next project
Halcyon