Pact

On the surface, Yogaworks was a typical yoga studio in Southern California. Aspirational, serious, a home for yoga practitioners with busy lives. But it had a rich history that went unnoticed: it was one of the first yoga studios to open in North America, beloved by early wellness devotées and celebrities alike. Along the way, though, they lost their footing: a shift in business models, changes in ownership, COVID and more. They came to us to help reimagine their brand for resilience and timelessness. The new vision is to bring the Yogaworks experience to more people through its digital platform and growing network of partnerships. Programming and instruction is extending into new settings, from wellness and hospitality to employee and member benefits. The classic in-person studio is where they began, but today the experience is digital-first. Focus lies on making its certified teachers and world-class instruction more accessible while building a library of classes and programs that can reach people well beyond the limits of a physical studio space. Their initial logo was a basic lotus flower, which had become cliché. They wanted something that showed the dedication and longevity of their brand message. They didn’t want loud or trendy or overly spiritual. They wanted sharp, calm, intelligent. We went for images that evoked the nobility and payoff of sustained, consistent effort, the reward for practicing in whatever state you’re in and embracing your imperfections day after day. We ditched the photo studio shots with generic white backgrounds that weren’t rooted in anything tangible and went more organic, bringing in brick-and-mortar colours to show the down-to-earth quality they were looking for. We aimed for a clear, clean design that told the simple story of showing up, just you, the mat, the instructor, and the journey. We provided a container for them to be what they are: mat-based fitness anytime, anywhere, building a steady practice, no matter the personal fitness goals. The most exciting thing we did for them was establish an understated, stripped-down, feminine tone. The result was a brand identity that felt less like a rebrand and more like a homecoming, a return to what Yogaworks had always been, now built to last. If your brand has a story worth telling but a storefront that doesn't tell it, that's exactly the problem we solve. https://lnkd.in/gnd2i7qp

Most soft luxury brands put everything they have into a rebrand—rethinking identity, strategy, and creative vision—but then plug it into a Shopify template that zaps it of life. What they worked so hard to build was for naught because, not only does it not translate to the customer, but it looks the same as every other brand. That's the problem we solve. ALLIES OF SKIN is a clinical skincare brand built on potency, precision, and efficacy. When they partnered with brand identity firm Established on a new look, they needed a digital flagship that needed to look and feel like the reinvented brand. We rebuilt their Shopify storefront from the ground up—in close collaboration with Established—bringing every brand decision into a commerce experience that's credible, converts, and built to scale. What that looked like: → A step-by-step beauty routine navigation system and a "Supercharge Your Routine" product bundle builder so the shopping experience mirrored how the brand thinks about skincare. → Product pages that highlight clinical proof points, including an interactive Proven Results module with toggleable outcomes at 1 use, 4 weeks, and 2 months, and customer review highlights. → A tiered gift cart that tracks the customer's path from free shipping to two complimentary gifts, lifting the AOV without compromising the premium experience. Every interface decision—from product tags, to quick-add functionality, to the brand storytelling pages— had the same positioning across every touchpoint. This is what Brand-Led Commerce looks like in practice. The brand’s vision is flawlessly executed while the tech effortlessly hums along in the background. Templates mean compromise. That’s why reimagining a digital flagship that stands out and is as powerful as the products you’re selling won’t work if you try to fit into a digital mould. Nor is it built to handle growth. If you're a founder heading into a rebrand, or sitting on one that isn’t doing your brand justice, I'd love to show you what's possible with custom designs → https://workwithpact.com

Over the past five years, we’ve helped Studs scale from one location in the heart of Manhattan to more than 40 locations nationwide. We optimized their digital infrastructure by building the bridge between their physical studios and digital ecosystem. Here is the reality of scaling a service-based retail brand: → What works for 5 locations will absolutely break at 50. Studs successfully disrupted the mall-piercing-gun experience by creating an environment that is safe, needle-only, and incredibly cool. As they grew, we knew we needed to create a more bespoke experience for bookings that prioritized the following: 1. The Brand The widget felt generic. It didn't feel like Studs. It broke the immersion of the brand universe. 2. The Logic If a customer in LA wanted to book at the Melrose studio but it was full, the widget just said "no availability." The customer was dead-ended. They were leaving money, and customer trust, on the table. We replaced the rigid widget with a custom booking platform built on omnichannel logic. Now, the system understands geography. If Abbott Kinney is booked for three weeks? The site immediately says, "Why don't you try the studio in Century City?" We also unified the customer profile. Now, when you get pierced, that data talks to your digital account. If you just pierced your Rook, the site knows to recommend earrings specifically designed for a Rook. It turned a one-time service appointment into a personalized e-commerce flywheel. This is the difference between "installing a plugin" and building a resilient retail experience. You can’t scale if your digital foundation is brittle, and that is why you need tech that is as elevated as your brand.

We helped Roller Rabbit increase gross sales by more than 50% and boost their conversion rate by 19% after a brand refresh. This 20+-year-old brand came to us to reimagine their flagship identity online after interior redesigns at 10 retail stores across the US. They’d just invested heavily in the storefront interiors and needed a website that would match the upscale aesthetic. The site needed to delight, but convert; be whimsical, but functional; to tell a story while selling. They required: → an overarching aesthetic that captured the unique look and feel of each store → a theme that spoke to their wide demographic - from babies to preteens to moms and grandmothers alike → an indistinguishable, signature style that reflected their brick and mortar stores → a backend that could keep pace with weekly new product drops and viral sales Direction-wise, this was not an easy feat. Building something modular allowed us to take their input at face value, piece thematic elements together to find the right font and colour palette, and come up with an ultra-flexible flagship that could handle their product partnership model, seasonal launches, and dynamic merchandising. Whether it was a homepage or product detail pages, content blocks could be rearranged to highlight new items, while maintaining a consistent brand narrative at every touchpoint. The site UX is organic and hyper-intuitive to each buyer profile, creating a digital experience that’s as tailor-made for a gift-buying nana as it is for a shopaholic teen. The brand identity didn’t change, the platform simply evolved into a timeless zeitgeist that can support new product categories and partnerships and continue serving its loyal customer base. Not all brand challenges are created equal, and this one was a huge undertaking. We’re proud to say that we created something that told their story and sold their products in a way that reflected their ethos, vision, aesthetics, ambitions without the tech getting in the way. If your brand challenge feels like a huge undertaking too, thats usually where we do our best work. Tell us about yours → https://lnkd.in/gfuN_4Sd

We helped Hill House Home navigate an operational upheaval after their Nap Dress launch outpaced expectations, selling $1 million in inventory in just 12 minutes. Sounds like a dream problem, right? Except Shopify crashed and the whole platform went down during their drop. They needed a solution to handle unprecedented traffic and a way to stage content without customers seeing it (Shopify doesn't make this easy). Our answer? A waiting room. But not the Ticketmaster kind that makes you want to throw your laptop across the room. We turned it into an experience: → Curated playlists for each collection. Amalfi Coast vibes for their Italian-inspired line. Dark academia music for their Fall collection. → Live chat where customers connected. People shared their planned purchases (which became invaluable first-party data for inventory forecasting). → Live streams with founder Nell Diamond. She showed how she'd style pieces with vintage jewelry, hair, and makeup. She'd say things like "perfect for my son's kindergarten graduation" and suddenly the dress felt personal. → Unexpected partnerships. Order bagels from Baz while waiting. Book a reservation at American Bar for two weeks out, when your dress arrives, and walk into a room full of people wearing Nap Dresses. → Polls and quizzes. First to answer questions about Hill House history correctly? They'd clear your cart and buy everything for you. What started as a technical workaround became a brand destination. People took screenshots of being "in the Nap Room" and shared them. It became an event. Constraints breed creativity. When you can't scale the traditional way, you create community. You turn a technical limitation into a reason for people to gather. You make the wait part of the experience. Hill House was doing drops 6-12 times a year. Now they've scaled back to a few curated launches a year. The "Nap Room" worked its way out of necessity, but it became core to their brand identity. Sometimes the best solutions come from asking: how do we make lemonade out of lemons?

If you optimise your site purely for AI, you can forget about having a beautifully designed website. A fully optimized site would look like a wall of text – inhuman (and just plain ugly). No one wants to read product descriptions that sound like a cattle auctioneer: Summer dress, cotton dress, maxi dress… Not all of that needs to be on the page in order for your brand to rank within AI-powered search engines. But the trick to designing a site for performance marketing while building an unparalleled customer experience comes down to how cleverly you use the available tech to your advantage. Here’s the Pact approach: 1. Invisible backend work Schema markup, knowledge app stuffing, alt titles in metadata are the way you rank high in GEO. Customers never see it, but it works and isn’t hard to implement. 2. Collaborative brand decisions Product descriptions, store pages, content modules is where you can get strategic about content that makes you visible. The design challenge is to make it brand-led and LLM-friendly. 3. Design pioneering Comparison tables, competitor mentions are things AI loves but not all brands have the appetite for. We can help steer you in a direction that feels right for you. Wherever you’re at in your brand’s AI optimization and/or personalised shopping journey mapping, we can help ensure you launch new campaigns and build authentic customer experiences in a robust, future-proof tech ecosystem. Don’t let all the nurturing you’ve done be for naught because your brand is either buried online or because the system you’ve built can’t survive the next technological wave. Agentic commerce can look daunting from the outset. DM me for Pact’s agentic playbook to get a clear grasp of how it could work for you.