Case Study 05 · E‑commerce · 2021

The Black Tux

Rebuilding the primary e‑commerce funnel for event‑based formal wear — as a team of one grew into a design org latticed across three subsystems.

Role

Head of Product Design
Led process, research & execution

Team

3 Product Designers
3 Product & 14 Eng partners

Platform

Web — e‑commerce

Scope

Primary funnel, end to end

01 — Context

Where the business
stood when I joined

Pent‑up wedding demand was arriving — and the site wasn't ready to capture it.

The Black Tux rents and sells event‑based formal wear for wedding parties. I joined in early 2021, inheriting a single product designer.

Coming out of COVID‑19 lockdown, pent‑up demand for weddings was accelerating growth. I was brought on to build the design team and prepare the product to capture that demand and maximize revenue.

02 — Problem

Five drags
on revenue

An overburdened funnel that couldn't express the business's own levers.

Funnel flows were overburdened with featuresYears of additions had piled onto the core flows, blurring the paths to purchase.
Inventory limits stopped at the style levelConstraints couldn't be expressed on SKUs — sizes within a style — limiting merchandising and inventory control.
Site order size lagged the showroomAverage order size online trailed far behind what showrooms achieved with the same customers.
Purchase stayed flat while rental grewThe for‑purchase business wasn't participating in the company's growth.
Grooms and groomsmen got uneven experiencesParty creators and participants moved through flows of uneven quality — with uneven performance to match.

03 — Objectives

What success
had to look like

Grow the site's contribution to revenue — and hand the business finer controls.

Increase the site's contribution to revenueMeasured through conversion, average order size, and average contract value.
Build fine‑tuned leversGive inventory management, merchandising, marketing, and conversion optimization the controls the old funnel couldn't express.

04 — Process

How the work
was run

Discovery to refinement, with the domain split into three subsystems.

01 — Discovery

Strategy, questions, KPIs

Design strategy, formulated questions, set KPIs, gathered data and previous research.

02 — Exploration

Ideation, IA & validation

Structured brainstorming, shadowing, tiger teams, information architecture, prototyping and user testing.

03 — Execution

Lockups, specs & roll‑out

Page lockups, design‑system components, key states and edge cases, redlines, strategic roll‑out planning.

04 — Refinement

Test, measure, iterate

A/B testing of the MVP against target outcomes, refined toward the KPIs.

Three semi‑independent subsystems

Subsystem

Drives

Paired design team

Decision Architecture

Conversion & AOV

Sr Product Designer + Product Designer

Funnel Mechanics

Conversion & AOV

Lead Product Designer + Product Designer

Party Building

Avg Party Size & AOV

Lead Product Designer + Sr Product Designer

Research that changed what got built

Unmoderated first‑click, 5‑second tests, and design surveys gave quick signal on card anatomy, micro‑copy, and price presentation. The design team recruited 10 in‑market users for interviews — wrote the discussion guide, led the sessions, and presented findings on buy‑vs‑rent decisions, customization, comparing choices, and price perception directly to stakeholders.

Stakeholders

CEOCSOCMOHead of ProductDir. EngineeringDir. Merchandising