TORY SPORT
Sport, Tailored
Art Direction
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UX/UI Design
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Product Strategy
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Launch Strategy
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Art Direction + UX/UI Design + Product Strategy + Launch Strategy +
CLIENT
Tory Sport (Tory Burch)
ROLE
Digital Art Director
SECTOR
Omni Channel Retail
TEAM
Creative, UX, Strategy, Technology, Content
THE CHALLENGE
In 2013, US sales of women's activewear reached $11.5 billion, up 9% on the year before, and everyone from H&M to Stella McCartney had a range. Tory Burch felt the main players were either not stylish enough or too aggressive. It saw room for sportswear aimed at women who care how they look as much as how they perform. Tory Sport was the answer, pitched as 40% sport and 60% Tory.
The new brand needed its own online store. It would be built on Tory Burch's existing e-commerce platform by the in-house team, next to one of the most digitally savvy fashion sites in the world. It had to earn sporting credibility without losing the colour, print and femininity that set Tory apart. And it had to work on phones: mobile brought half of toryburch.com's traffic but only a fifth of its sales.
THE IDEA
Tory Burch described the product as fashion first, then function, and we designed the site the same way.
We built on the brand essence, Perform Beautifully, across art direction, experience and content. The art direction used the logo's stripes as a design cue and balanced Tory's richness with sporting credibility, with full-bleed imagery carrying the fashion. The experience was organised the way this customer shops, by sport (running, studio, tennis and more), with content and icons explaining what each piece does.
Of the two concepts we presented, Tory Burch took the more progressive route forward. It worked like an app: a simple menu, sideways swipes through each sport, and vertical scroll into the product. We designed it for tablet first, then carried it to desktop and mobile. The performance detail sat quietly beneath the imagery, with icons on product pages that the client also wanted to use as filters.
Alongside the site we developed a content strategy with its own vision, "impassioned life, sumptuous style, dynamic sport". Editorial could sit inside the shopping journey, whether written by Tory or by contributors.
