Assisting brands in the design and development of soft-goods with a strong emphasis on the outdoors.

Managing New Zealand’s largest sports club made use of all my strategic and organisational skills and so much more. At its core, the role hinged on the ability to juggle numerous projects while working with a diverse range of stakeholders. Managing the club highlighted my skills as a strong communicator and listener with the ability to then work independently to problem solve with minimal resources. I’ve also relied on my unique ability to obtain a deep understanding of the audience, which in this case is our members, to then zoom out to think strategically about the direction of the organisation. Despite not being a design-specific role was still been able to utilise design to help strengthen the club’s presentation to increase profile and improve revenue.

During my time with the company I have had the pleasure of bringing mulitple products to market, most of which I have worked on soley, taking them from concept to delivery. This has allowed me to rapidly improve my skills in contractor communication, organisation and project man- agreement. In addition to sourcing and designing products for the company’s three in-house brands, I also rebrand- ed them to bring them up to date and inline with industry standards. As a response to the challenging climate the MTB industry is in, I’m temporarily lending my skill to the marketing department with a focus on creating graphic content and developing strategy to give the company a competitive edge.

Spoke offered me an epic opportunity to continue my work in the outdoor industry and a rare chance to unearth my dormant creative writing skills. My time at the Media house was mainly spent creating content and managing social media platforms of both Spoke Magazine and Charge magazine. I was also fortunate enough to ride in Premier MTB destinations and test ride the latest bikes & accessories which fueled a lot of the content creation and articles for the print and digital platforms of the two magazines. This opportunity along with my time at Mons Royale has cemented my passion for action sports design and in particular designing for the mountain bike industry.

After losing my previous job to Covid-19 I knew I would have to have an open mind as to what I would do next. Although jobs in Wanaka were slim I had one prerequisite, my next role had to involve mountain bikes. Black Peak Cycles picked me up as bike mechanic without having any official experience or training, this turned into a wild ride of learning the many intricacies of repairing bicycles. As expected I learnt how to perform advanced repairs on bikes but what I didn't expect was to learn the art of staying level headed when a problem seems unsolvable. Bike mechanics with Black Peak thought me to see these very technical challenges all the way through to the end by any means necessary. This often meant putting my pride to the side and using my communications skills to reach out to experts around the country to gain insight into solving the problem at hand. Black Peak's owner Doug Hamilton has a deep understanding of the mountain bike industry and I made it my job to pick his brains from 9-5 every day I was in the shop. For this reason I was able to pick up an in depth knowledge of the biking industry. Doug is still a good mate of mine and one I reach out to regularly to discuss the latest bike tech or hear stories about what the tech was like when he started riding in the 90s.

It was my pleasure to join the lean and passionate product team at Mons Royale for a short but sweet stint ended by the impacts of the Covid-19 health crisis. Mons offered me a varied role as a designer where my main goals were developing and managing the performance testing program, designing and managing their alpine handwear range and developing designs for stand alone retail fixtures.This dynamic and varied role had me working on the whole spectrum of the product life cycle, from the birth of product ideas and improvements to designing and managing a product, through to the art of displaying products in store. Because of this role's diversity I was well positioned to develop product briefs for different product groups, plucking insights from the performance testing program and mixing them with market research to develop detailed presentations proposing the direction of certain product groups in question. Although my time was cut short at Mons by the impacts of Covid-19 on reflection the main take away from my role in this great upcoming company is to always find new and inventive ways to harvest insights from your customers. Finding out what they want is easy but understanding what they dont know they need from their products is where the innovation lies. This means not just opening your ears to what they say about your product but knowing how they interact with it from purchase to end of life cycle. Cheers Mons, it was a blast.

Mons Royale contracted me to design and visualise their first two retail stores. Working from rough plans and location visits it was my responsibility to design the spaces using 3D software, consult on how to optimise the space for retail use and create detailed visualisations and plan drawings to insure the space was safe, accessible and up to the standards of the mall. It was awesome to be included in the small and efficient team assembled for this project.

I was contracted by Vallarret to join their small team for an intensive few months of designing, sourcing & advising on corporate responsibility. The contract started off with a factory visit to carry out quality control and observe first hand the challenges that come with factory made gloves. Although a this was a short contract we were able to achieve a lot even when working remotely, this is testament to their open-mindedness, work ethic and great communication skills.

During my experience at Studiomem as a design Trainee I was involved in a wide range of tasks, responsibilities and learnt invaluable tools from a talented team.Studiomem instantly noticed my interests in design strategy and social trend mapping and applied them to enrich content early in the design process. Studiomem opened up amazing opportunities to research future trends in depth–to help clients shed light on emerging and changing markets. At the same time I was able to learn from experienced designers about forming,designing and presenting ideas. The respect for fellow designers ideas and process resulted in open and productive concept creation and ultimately successful projects. The awesome dynamic with the small and fun loving Studiomem team is definitely something I will continue to strive for as I look to move into the functional soft goods arena.

My short time at Bivouac as a sales assistant was very enjoyable because I was able to advise novice adventurers while learning from expert outdoorsmen. The nature of the position meant I got an overview about what people like and dislike about the outdoors gear they used. It was a great insight into a user group that I hope to one day design for.

Starting a company from scratch was one of the most influential choices of my design career. Asides from building a deep design & material story around the local industries of New Zealand, I also- Designed and prototyped bags and footwear concepts.- Forecast trends that informed colour and material themes to in turn influence final designs.- Spent time building relationships with local suppliers and artisans.- Created and learnt new design and production methods to simplify complex soft goods processes.- Organised campaign shoots to showcase products- Designed creative systems to bring the consumer closer to the production process.