Olivela wasn’t simply another fashion retailer. Every purchase helped support charitable causes, creating a business where luxury shopping and social impact existed side by side.

Working alongside the team on Olivela 2.0, I helped explore how product strategy, UX and visual identity could evolve the experience while staying true to that mission. The challenge wasn’t just to modernise the platform, it was to ensure purpose remained visible throughout the customer journey without overshadowing the premium retail experience.

We reviewed customer behaviour, analytics and existing journeys to understand where friction existed and where the experience could better support both users and the business. Alongside this, we explored established eCommerce patterns and best practice to ensure every design decision was grounded in evidence rather than opinion.

This work helped shape the foundations for Olivela 2.0 before moving into interface design.

As the product direction became clearer, the focus shifted from individual pages to creating a more flexible platform.

Working closely with content and creative teams, I helped establish a reusable content system built around shared components and templates. The goal wasn’t simply consistency, it was enabling editorial storytelling, campaigns and future product launches to be created efficiently without redesigning every page from scratch.

This created a stronger balance between creativity, operational efficiency and long-term scalability.

Luxury retail demands an emotional experience, but it also needs to perform commercially.

Throughout the redesign we carefully balanced elegant visual design with practical UX improvements, ensuring customers could browse, compare and purchase with confidence while keeping Olivela’s charitable mission visible throughout the journey.

Rather than treating brand and usability as competing priorities, the ambition was to strengthen both together.

This project fundamentally changed how I think about scalability.

Great digital products aren’t just beautifully designed—they’re designed to evolve. Creating reusable templates, shared components and a flexible content system meant thinking beyond the launch, giving multiple teams the freedom to create new experiences while maintaining a consistent product and brand.

It also reinforced that purpose alone isn’t enough. A meaningful mission may attract customers, but it’s thoughtful product design that earns their trust and keeps them engaged.

Head of product: Kelly Richards, Product and design Lead: Jenna Patrick, Creative direction: Alexandra St-Amour, Development: Persistant Engineering https://www.olivela.com/