Accelerating the A&F digital product evolution
2021-2023
Client
Abercrombie & Fitch
The Challenge
A&F customers found the flagship myAbercrombie rewards program confusing — the points structure, earning opportunities, and redemption values were unclear, and user sentiment increasingly questioned whether the program’s benefits were worth the effort of joining at all.
That confusion compounded when Hollister launched two new sister brands, Social Tourist and Gilly Hicks. The existing rewards program, Club Cali, hadn’t been built to flex across a growing, diverse brand portfolio, and needed a full relaunch under tight time constraints.
Further downstream, customer and analytics research surfaced friction throughout the shopping journey itself: shoppers abandoning carts because free-shipping thresholds weren’t clear, loyal customers wanting faster paths to checkout, and top-tier members asking for reasons to stay engaged beyond a standard points-and-redemption model.
Approach
I worked across research, product, marketing, legal, and engineering stakeholders to rebuild the loyalty experience from its foundations up, then extended that thinking into the broader shopping journey.
Rebuilding the core program. Partnering directly with the loyalty product owner, marketing stakeholders, and A&F’s corporate legal team, I helped redefine the program’s benefit tiers and simplify its points-earning scale — removing ambiguity and rebuilding the experience around clear, tangible member value rather than an opaque points economy.
Scaling the model to a multi-brand portfolio. As UX Design Lead on the six-month Hollister House Rewards relaunch, I began with a comprehensive experience audit spanning web, native apps, point-of-sale, DSP, and the design system — mapping every touchpoint the new program would need to support. I worked closely with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Creative to plan execution requirements, timelines, and delivery, and in the process helped establish new cross-functional ways of working between UX, Marketing, and Creative that made the aggressive timeline achievable.
Building the tools to keep improving. Recognizing that inconsistent competitive research was limiting design quality across the org, I developed a standardized Competitive Benchmarking framework — a repeatable way for squads to define, document, and surface emerging patterns from both direct fashion retail competitors and digital innovators outside the category.
Extending value beyond points. With Early Access, I worked across purchase, account, and post-purchase squads to design member-exclusive product access that integrated seamlessly into the shopping experience during promotional windows and degraded gracefully outside them. With Virtual Styling, I helped design a premium, experience-based benefit — live 1-on-1 video styling sessions with A&F stylists — as a proof of concept for rewarding top-tier VIP members beyond the traditional earn-and-burn model.
Fixing friction in the funnel. Using analytics and user research, I helped identify that checkout abandonment was tied to unclear free-shipping thresholds, and designed a solution that surfaced the $75 threshold earlier in the funnel with a clear visual indicator. Separately, in collaboration with the Purchase Product Team, I designed a Buy Now proof-of-concept allowing myAbercrombie members to check out directly from the product page using stored preferences and payment methods.
Impact
Hollister House Rewards launched in Summer ’23 and was named a Top 10 Apparel Loyalty Program by Newsweek.
The Competitive Benchmarking framework was adopted org-wide, becoming the standard Sprint 0 activity for A&F’s 40+ person UX/Product organization.
Early Access launched in Summer ’23 and drove member engagement strong enough that Merchant and Marketing teams doubled the number of planned Early Access events.
The free-shipping threshold redesign launched and delivered a multi-million dollar increase in operating margin.
Together, these projects moved A&F’s loyalty ecosystem from a source of customer confusion to a recognized industry leader — while embedding research and benchmarking practices that outlasted any single project.
