SMOKE RISE NY

When I joined, design was unstaffed, so I consolidated all of it

When I joined Smoke Rise in 2023, its design existed as scattered decisions, not a system. Product decisions, brand consistency, and performance creative were spread across whoever had time. I came in to consolidate all of it. My scope ran end to end:

• E-commerce site: UX, IA, and conversion
• B2B: two external platforms plus the retailer section on the main site
• Brand system: voice, visual language, and packaging, built from scratch
• Paid and lifecycle: Meta and Google creative, the campaign landing pages, and the email program that grew customer lifetime value past the first purchase

I worked alongside a product manager, a developer, and a rotating roster of graphic designers, photographers, and influencers who produced content under the brand system I built.

Traffic was strong. The funnel wasn't, so I rebuilt it.

When I started, the DTC site was Smoke Rise's weakest conversion surface. Traffic was strong; the funnel wasn't. By reviewing Google Analytics data, it was clear that the users were dropping off in three moments: browsing the catalog, deciding on a product, and converting in cart.

I redesigned each surface mobile-first. The majority of Smoke Rise's traffic was on mobile, and every structural decision was made against the mobile experience first. Desktop followed. Conversion lifted ~20% directionally across the period.

I rebuilt the PDP around the decision customers were actually making

The PDP was carrying nothing but product imagery. There were no product descriptions, no return information, no upsell, no metadata for SEO to rank against. Search wasn't picking the pages up, and customers were being asked to commit without information.

A specific friction point surfaced through customer behavior: returns were frequent, and shoppers were reaching out asking what size they should buy.

To improve the PDP, I built out the page's structured data on Shopify (shipping, return policy, fit, descriptions, metadata tags). On top of that I restructured the page hierarchy (image, decision-critical detail, supporting context, related product) and added a fit guide pop-up and a cross-sell module that surfaced complementary pieces tied to the product being viewed.

The page started doing the work. Add-to-cart moved. The cross-sell module lifted AOV (average order value). The fit guide cut size-related support inquiries. That same data work let me organize products into dynamic collections more cleanly, which streamlined the rest of the seasonal workflow.

Designing for buyers, not consumers

Wholesale buyers don't shop like consumers. They arrive with a purchase order in mind, move through large catalogs fast, and need pricing, availability, and line-sheet legibility up front. Smoke Rise's wholesale ran on three surfaces, none designed as a system: two external B2B platforms, plus a retailer-only section on the main site.

On the external platforms, the work was information architecture more than visual design: what to show and in what order, within each platform's constraints, rather than forcing parity. I built a retailer section for speed: dense layouts, fast filtering, downloadable assets, no marketing copy. A separate B2B email program on MailChimp sent drops tailored by purchase history, geography, and category, each linking to a landing page that rendered to the email it came from.

The hard part was holding brand coherence across surfaces I controlled to different degrees. It taught me to work with constraints I didn't set, for users who don't want to be marketed to, on surfaces I don't fully own. That's the muscle I most want to keep building.

When I joined, Smoke Rise had a logo and a set of recurring visual habits, but no system. Every email looked slightly different. Every campaign re-litigated the same decisions. Paid creative was inconsistent enough that performance was hard to attribute to anything other than spend.

I built the brand from the inside out: tone and voice first, then color and typography, then visual language, then packaging. The deliverable was a full set of guidelines. The point was that the guidelines had to hold up under pressure, across high-volume email, fast-turn paid creative, organic social, and physical product, and in the hands of other people. Graphic designers, photographers, and influencers all produced work under the system.

The full brand guidelines are confidential. What's shown below is the system in application, across the surfaces where it had to work hardest.

The system was the variable I controlled, and it held 4.6× ROAS

The clearest test was paid social and search. Meta and Google creative ran continuously, with new variants designed and shipped weekly against the previous week's performance data, and over the period the channel sustained a 4.6× ROAS.

On email, the brand system made Smoke Rise recognizable in the inbox; the Klaviyo work I did behind it (segmentation, send timing, and deliverability) made sure the right buyer received it. In March 2025 the open rate hit 51.6%, above the peer-group median (49.9%) and well above the broader apparel and accessories median (45.2%).

The comparison is the signal: my marketing background lets me design past the interface. A customer doesn't experience a PDP, an email, or an ad in isolation. They experience one brand across all of them, and that whole path is the surface I design for.

Sole designer against a merchandising calendar, not a design one

Fashion runs on seasons, and Smoke Rise shipped new collections multiple times a year. Each cycle started with the B2B line sheet (what we'd take to wholesale partners to anchor the season) and the rest cascaded from there: campaign concept, photography direction, site updates, email program, paid creative, packaging where relevant. All of it on a deadline set by the merchandising calendar, not the design one.

Working as the sole designer against that cadence shaped how I designed. I built reusable components instead of bespoke layouts, treating the brand system as infrastructure.