Every retail concept begins with strategy.
Before developing a visual direction, I partner with merchandising and planning teams to analyze category performance, sales trends, and opportunities across product pyramids. These insights help frame the opportunity and define the guardrails for the project.
From there, I translate strategy into storytelling—moving from inspiration and concept development to spatial design and in-store execution.
Here’s my Retail Storytelling Process:
Strategy & Insights
Align with merchandising partners to define the business objective, analyze past performance, category opportunities, and guest behaviors, and translate these insights into clear in-store goals that inform the visual strategy.
1
Get Inspired
Gather references across culture and retail—from art and architecture to fashion, music, and innovative store environments—to shape the emotional tone of the story.
2
Dream It
Sketch early ideas to explore how the business objectives can come to life through product, environment, and storytelling. In this phase I define the halo of the collection, identify key marketing and storytelling elements needed to support the concept, and visualize the intent of the space. These early sketches are used to align cross-functional partners on the overall direction before moving into design development.
3
Design It
Translate the concept into scaled 3D environments to validate merchandising capacity, fixture placement, and customer flow. This stage becomes a critical tool for cross functional alignment, partnering with planning to understand inventory depth, merchants to define hero products and assortment balance, and store operations to ensure the concept can be executed in real store environments. Once the concept is aligned, I test the design in a mock store environment to validate fit, refine the experience, and confirm the vision can be implemented successfully at scale.
4
Set It
Before launch, I develop store maps and visual communication guides to ensure the concept can be executed consistently across the fleet. After the set goes live, I focus on hindsight by evaluating what worked, what did not, and how customers responded, capturing insights that inform the next concept.
5
Project Examples & Thought Process
Project Sunshine
Agua Bendita, Rhode & Fe Noel Limited Time Partnerships
Get inspired.
These 3 partnerships were going to share space and also launch for spring break. So my mind automatically went to a warm getaway, be close to water, lots of green, architectural arches and trellis full of jasmine flowers.
For this project, I was super inspired by the farm rio pop up at Nordstrom, the mannequin composition, stands and color from uniqlo and the beautiful pergola installation at Tory Burch.
Dream it.
This is my favorite part of the process, where I can sit and sketch how the collection can come to life. Dream all the possibilities and have some high level ideas to get people excited about the project and help them see my vision.
Design it.
Here is where rendering is very important, I like to take the collection and merchandise it utilizing SketchUp to plan how it can show up in store. then after the team feels comfortable of how it is taking shape. The team sets it in the mock store to validate the idea and walk leadership through the experience.
Set it.
After waiting a very long time, the collection finally sets in store.
Garden Party Gateway
Spring Collection
Get inspired.
The theme for the spring collection was a garden party, immediately my mind went to this artist who freezes bouquets of flowers and then takes photos of them. this was the perfect depiction of what most americans are feeling during this time of the year, the yearning to break through the ice and re-bloom again.
The gardens at versailles served as the inspiration for the location of this said garden party, lattice and architectural greenhouses were the perfect elements to bring this party to life
Dream it.
From here, I took all these elements, the lattice, the architectural arched windows and mirrors and envisioned how the fixtures in store plus the marketing elements could transform the space and give a sense of place to this presentation.
Then I worked with the floral team to bring in fresh flowers to the assortment mix, after all, what is a garden party without fresh flowers, right?
Design it.
Here is where rendering is very important, I like to take the collection and merchandise it utilizing SketchUp to plan how it can show up in store. then after the team feels comfortable of how it is taking shape. The team sets it in the mock store to validate the idea and walk leadership through the experience.
Set it.
After waiting a very long time, the collection finally sets in store.
Get inspired.
For this space I drew inspiration from organic shapes that mimic nature, arches that transport you to summer getaways and cabanas by the pool that turn into evening strolls through a beach town, to enhance the concept of beach-to-street wear, tailored to the gen Z.
Wild Fable Swim Launch
Dream it.
Enhancing the idea of wearing an outfit from the beach to the restaurant or street was my main goal for the visual merchandising experience, so I imagined vignettes where an outfit was highlighted with a mannequin but also, adjacent to it, you could find other options to take that outfit from the beach to the street.
Design it.
Took the product to Sketchup to validate the idea, assortment fir, carve space for in-store-marketing, partnering with cross functional teams to make sure everything was ticked and tied.
Set it.
Finally, the magic happens. product sets in store and blow sales out of the water.
Auden Sleep Launch
Soothing pajamas to treat yourself
Get inspired.
whn i think of treating myself, i think of a SPA day, maybe a mud mask or maybe a bath, but in all of this cases there’s something about the element of water that is soothing and relaxing, just like a brand new pajama.
I got inspired by SPA and beauty stores, with organic shapes and materials that mix warmth and fluidity of nature.
Dream it.
For this space I started with skecthup, bringing elements from the SPA world, plants, towels, vitamins, pillows, etc to evoke the idea of treating yourself and creating a calm environment, the apparel placed by color in the background also mimics the idea of calm and invites you to takes a pause and invest in yourself.
Design it.
After much deliberation with my cross functional partners, we decided to lean into the idea of the round shapes and the arches, and lead with small items, little treats, to brighten your day. I maintained the idea of merchandising by color to create an easy shopping system that mimics the calm and the softness of the product.
Set it.
When this space set in stores, it was a HIT. Our customers resonated with the experience so much that this is the best selling gateway of all times.
Valentine’s Day Gateway
Get inspired.
For this gateway I drew inspiration from everyday items that you can add a touch to give a nod of valentine’s day, a sweet detail to bring you joy and celebrate the day of love.
Dream it.
For this gateway i wanted to highlight all the cute details that design was working on, cute embroidery on denim, graphic tees, heart shapes and nods to valentine’s day.
Design it.
This was my very first gateway and it was very fitting that it was valentine’s day, because i really do love this space! so i decided to shape the fixture block like a heart, a little nod to the holiday.
I also wanted to get credit for the product so I lead with a denim capsule and set the mannequins in the center of the space, and then divided the assortment by color, classic Valentine’s on the left and greens and creams on the right, mirroring each other.
Set it.
The gateway set in stores and it was so beautiful!
