Tona Activewear

This design thinking and experiential strategy case study examines the concept and design of a pop-up retail experience for TONA Leggings, a sustainable activewear brand seeking deeper engagement with its target customers. While TONA had built awareness through digital channels, it lacked a physical touchpoint to validate product fit, brand storytelling, and customer experience assumptions. The work explored how a temporary retail activation could be used to test demand, gather customer insight, and translate brand values into a tangible, end-to-end experience.

The primary goal was to design a pop-up retail experience that translated TONA's sustainability values and product promise into a compelling, in-person customer journey. Secondary goals included validating assumptions around product fit and brand storytelling, identifying opportunities to gather actionable customer feedback, and exploring how experiential retail could support deeper engagement beyond digital channels.

The work was structured around a design thinking process, beginning with customer discovery to understand expectations around fit, sustainability, and in-person shopping experiences. I helped translate these insights into customer journey maps and experience concepts, then worked with the team to prototype the pop-up layout, interactions, and touchpoints. I contributed to testing and refining the experience through feedback loops, and helped synthesize findings into recommendations on how experiential retail could support TONA's broader brand and growth strategy.

A central decision was to use the pop-up as a learning and validation environment rather than a short-term sales channel. This prioritized customer insight, experience testing, and brand storytelling over immediate revenue, accepting lower near-term sales in exchange for richer feedback and clearer signals on product fit and messaging. Another key tradeoff was designing a focused, minimal footprint experience rather than a fully built-out retail environment, favoring flexibility and rapid iteration over scale and operational complexity.

The work produced a clearly defined pop-up experience concept that translated TONA's brand values into an in-person customer journey. Prototyping and testing generated actionable insight on product fit, messaging, and experiential touchpoints, helping clarify how physical retail could support deeper engagement and learning beyond digital channels. The concept and supporting research were presented to members of the TONA leadership team, who responded positively and indicated that elements of the research and experience design would inform future efforts to bring the pop-up to life.

This work strengthened my ability to apply design thinking to real business problems, translating customer insight into tangible experience concepts. It sharpened my judgment around balancing experimentation with strategic intent, collaborating within a team to iterate quickly, and communicating experiential ideas in a way that resonates with stakeholders and decision-makers.