REI Co-Op

Outdoor gear is a promise you make with your life. The digital experience selling it should feel just as dependable.

As Art Director for Digital Retail at REI, I worked on the co-op’s online storefront during a period of real growth, both in traffic and in ambition. REI members do not tolerate flimsiness in their gear, and they should not have to tolerate it in their shopping experience either.

The Challenge

REI.com needed to grow up fast. More devices, more traffic, more products, and a member base that expected the same integrity online that they found on a trailhead. The risk in scaling quickly is that quality quietly erodes: patterns drift, pages fragment, and the brand starts to feel less like a co-op and more like a catalog.

The Work

I helped rebuild REI.com on a responsive foundation so the experience held together across phones, tablets, and desktops. To keep quality from slipping as the team grew, I co-founded a Council for Digital Standards: a shared system of principles, patterns, and craft expectations that gave everyone a common language for what good looked like.

Standards are not bureaucracy. They are how a growing team keeps its promises to the people who trust it.

The Outcome

The rebuilt, responsive experience contributed to sales growth of roughly five percent per quarter. Just as lasting was the culture of craft the standards work left behind: a way of working that outlived any single page or campaign.