I don't have to talk about the impact COVID-19 had on in-store-based businesses, as we all felt and can still feel the lasting impact the pandemic had on physical locations during 2020. I created this re-opening project and campaign for Peter Millar before stores re-opened to plan for a hopeful future of stores, allowing customers to experience Peter Millar's quality products. Although stores have slowly re-opened, some stores are still closed to this day.

For those who might not be familiar, Peter Millar is a premium American lifestyle brand founded in Raleigh, North Carolina. Peter Millar produces casual sportswear, business wear, tailored dress furnishings, luxury and performance golf attire for men and women.

The discovery for Peter Millar's re-opening project was simple. How can we invite customers back into stores while also providing them with essential store-specific information? With this objective in mind, the team and I outlined the project's scope; we needed to have the website, email, and social assets ready to launch when the time came to re-open stores. Afterward, we outlined the direction and gathered the necessary elements to get started.

Peter Millar, or PM, has a rigorous branding system and style consistent across all aspects of the brand, including its luxury clothing pieces. The branding guidelines must be followed closely to maintain the brand's consistency. I had to organize these assets beforehand to allow myself and the team to edit and update elements if needed quickly. Although I cannot share PM's official branding or style guide information (as it is for internal use only), you should notice significant consistency throughout this case study!

As mentioned above, I knew what the project needed to accomplish and express before the creative process started. This project's biggest challenge was to ensure that users knew that a PM store near them was open but not position the message in a "sales" voice; therefore, the user experience needed to be simple. This process allowed users to know any and all fundamental information upfront and explore if they chose to.

Peter Millar's creative process is rigorous, as each design must be approved. Each asset had many iterations before we finalized the design for public viewing.

Once the entire team agreed on the direction moving forward, the team and I pulled all current store images from PM's database to accompany the creative components. Due to the pandemic nature, the team did have the chance to update store photos for several years; therefore, we had to work with what we had available. We also had to reach out to store owners to finalize the correct information within each post.

I created consistent assets for each physical store; Peter Millar has 17 stores to date. Below is a sample of stores that I designed re-opening elements for; not all stores were included in this case study, but all stores had one asset at the end of the project.

After collecting, finalizing, and creating all the information, we implemented each final design across the brand and every PM social channel. Once the landing page was developed, users could easily see if a store in their area was open or closed and stay updated on this information, which changed regularly.