Pentland Connect
Five sports brands on one self-serve B2B portal. Turning complexity into a unified platform, leading to +120% uptake by Pentland’s retailers & trade partners.
A selection of screengrabs from my designs that were handed over to the Engineers using Figma Dev Mode. These were created within the existing Pentland design system, and I provided
Overview
Pentland Brands is the owner of global sports brands such as Speedo, Berghaus, Canterbury and more, selling to retailers and trade partners all over the world. But ordering from them was a mess: every market had its own portal, spreadsheets and phone-order workarounds, with most processes relying on Account Managers or Customer Service Reps.
There was very little data or user research to help guide the design of the service, and design-thinking wasn’t at the table at all. Due to these inefficiencies it was impossible to scale the service.
I led Pentland’s first ever user research with its B2B customers, then led the team that redesigned the whole service, end to end, as both lead designer and team manager.
The live portal can only be accessed by account holders, but you can view one of our early prototypes.
view Prototype
My Role
Senior Digital Experience Manager at Pentland Brands. A player-coach role: Lead designer and design team manager leading a team of 5 people.
Core Team
Global Product Manager
Senior Product Designer
Product Designer
Business Analyst
Wider Team
COO
5 x Brand Marketing Heads
Software Engineering Team
Legal Team
B2B Customer Service Team
Timeline
Discovery to launch: approx 10 months, then a graduated rollout of 1 year.
Methods
User research, internal research & workshops, service design, product design, information architecture, stakeholder management, business case development.
Tools
Figma, Miro, UserTesting.com
Impacts
We saw an uptake of the service of
+120%
over the following 2 years.
The launch of the Customer Portal transformed the way this arm of the organisation worked. From slow, manual, & cumbersome, to intuitive, & fast.
5 sports brands
on one, self-serve portal.
A mockup of the homepage of Pentland Connect on launch, the self-serve Customer portal. Designed in Figma.
The Challenge
The existing system didn’t allow partners to do the basics themselves, like checking stock, placing orders or requesting stock rotations, without emailing or phoning an account manager. Each of the seven brands had its own processes, and there was almost no data or research on what partners actually needed.
So the challenge was to design one self-serve service that worked for every brand, every market and every partner, without disrupting sales while we did it.
Process
My
Flow
💬
🗺️
📈
🖌️
🎨
🧪
- Testing & rollout
Myself & the wider team ran what felt like every test on the planet! Automated technical testing, A/B tests, hypercare periods etc. I was responsible for managing the pilot tests and graduated rollout across the markets, tracking adoption & operational impact — which is how we got to +120% adoption after 2 years.
- Mapping & blueprinting
I mapped the real internal service experience highlighting the inefficiencies and broken links, mapped the data flows with BAs, & untangled permissions & compliance problems with Legal.
My output: Business workflow maps & "As Is" service blueprints
5. Designing the detail
I drove focused design sprints with UXUI designers and the software development team, using rapid prototyping and iterative user testing to create a new B2B experience that customers & staff would find easy & enjoyable to use.
4. Designing the high-level experience
Onto the design... working with the BAs, I created new “To Be” service blueprints and user flows (for both external customers and internal teams) mapping out how the new service would work - rapid testing and iterating along the way.
3. Business case to C-Suite for approval
I owned the digital workstreams of the business case, presenting evidence, risks, and phased investment options to senior leadership. The result was C-suite alignment and a mandate to lead the programme across EMEA.
1. Multi-market discovery
Spoke to customers and teams across EMEA, shadowed sales reps, and pulled apart wildly different workflows to understand why everyone was solving the same problems differently.
A screengrab of a comprehensive set of user stories that I created on the back of 2 rounds of user research with both internal and external stakeholders. These user stories covered the whole customer user journey, from first awareness to long-term customer retention. It also broke out whether the user story was global or market-specific.
These user stories acted as the first source of truth for the business to define & understand the scale of the problem. I used these user stories to work with the COO of Pentland Brands (and his team) to prioritise which were they key problems to solve in this project (using a matrix of business profitability and impact on the user). This both formed the project scope, and also the subsequent roadmap for later development.
the hurdles 🚧... and how i overcame them
⏱️ Legacy platforms & a huge time crunch
The ERP system we were using was creaking at the seams causing problems for staff and Customers alike. And the contract was ending, with no option (or desire!) to be renewed. Time was limited.
I worked with the C-Suite sponsors to create a very clear project scope, and a process through which any proposed change to priorities could be decided on quickly, with minimum beaurocracy.
Conflicting stakeholders 🤬
5 different brand teams, all with their own Sales, Service, Logistics, and Legal processes. All who naturally thought their process was the best...
I set up a cross-functional design council with a clear RACI. Using the user stories above I fought for alignment on the common user stories that would benefit all brands & markets. Then we went after those together.
Operational readiness & change management ⚠️️
There’s never a good time for a huge change like this. Everyone was worried about something, and usually with good reason. I had to manage this replatform with minimal disruption to sales
I co-designed with frontline teams, built walkthroughs into the product, and set OKRs (adoption, self-serve, ticket deflection) so operations could see the impact and adjust.
🔐 GDPR, privacy & role-based access ️
The ERP system we were using was creaking at the seams causing problems for staff and Customers alike. And the contract was ending, with no option (or desire!) to be renewed. Time was limited.
I worked with the C-Suite sponsors to create a very clear project scope, and a process through which any proposed change to priorities could be decided on quickly, with minimum beaurocracy.
Legacy platforms & zero-disruption migration
The challenge was a patchwork of market-specific builds and workarounds that made consistency and maintenance hard.
I designed an 80/20 model—80% global, 20% customisable—with light localisation rules and a simple governance checklist so markets could tailor within bounds while keeping a sustainable global process.
🇪🇺 Cross-cultural collaboration & ways of working
There’s never a good time for a huge change like this. Everyone was worried about something, and usually with good reason. I had to manage this replatform with minimal disruption to sales
I co-designed with frontline teams, built walkthroughs into the product, and set OKRs (adoption, self-serve, ticket deflection) so operations could see the impact and adjust.
Examples from my business workflow user flows that I built through my research with various internal teams. I then turned these into the first “As Is” service blueprints to map the external customer journey with the internal processes.
I used these service blueprints (there were several blueprints, each covering a key business process) to demonstrate the pain points and inefficiencies to senior stakeholders and budget holders, to highlight where we should focus our efforts and where the largest business gains could be found.
A view of the working Figma design file covering all the possible website change states, error messages, variations etc. The working prototype is available to view through the button above.
These screens, along with the prototype were used predominantly by the Engineers and BAs as they built the portal. The detail shown through the many screen variations covered all the user stories that the portal had to cater for as a Customer moved through their online journey.
How I led the design team
The existing system didn’t allow partners to do the basics themselves, like checking stock, placing orders or requesting stock rotations, without emailing or phoning an account manager. Each of the seven brands had its own processes, and there was almost no data or research on what partners actually needed.
So the challenge was to design one self-serve service that worked for every brand, every market and every partner, without disrupting sales while we did it.
Next Case Study
Pentland Connect
Five sports brands on one self-serve B2B portal. Turning complexity into a unified platform, leading to +120% uptake by Pentland’s retailers & trade partners.
A selection of screengrabs from my designs that were handed over to the Engineers using Figma Dev Mode. These were created within the existing Pentland design system, and I provided
Overview
Pentland Brands is the owner of global sports brands such as Speedo, Berghaus, Canterbury and more, selling to retailers and trade partners all over the world. But ordering from them was a mess: every market had its own portal, spreadsheets and phone-order workarounds, with most processes relying on Account Managers or Customer Service Reps.
There was very little data or user research to help guide the design of the service, and design-thinking wasn’t at the table at all. Due to these inefficiencies it was impossible to scale the service.
I led Pentland’s first ever user research with its B2B customers, then led the team that redesigned the whole service, end to end, as both lead designer and team manager.
The live portal can only be accessed by account holders, but you can view one of our early prototypes.
view Prototype
My Role
Senior Digital Experience Manager at Pentland Brands. A player-coach role: Lead designer and design team manager leading a team of 5 people.
Core Team
Global Product Manager
Senior Product Designer
Product Designer
Business Analyst
Wider Team
COO
5 x Brand Marketing Heads
Software Engineering Team
Legal Team
B2B Customer Service Team
Timeline
Discovery to launch: approx 10 months, then a graduated rollout of 1 year.
Methods
User research, internal research & workshops, service design, product design, information architecture, stakeholder management, business case development.
Tools
Figma, Miro, UserTesting.com
Impacts
We saw an uptake of the service of
+120%
over the following 2 years.
The launch of the Customer Portal transformed the way this arm of the organisation worked. From slow, manual, & cumbersome, to intuitive, & fast.
5 sports brands
on one, self-serve portal.
A mockup of the homepage of Pentland Connect on launch, the self-serve Customer portal. Designed in Figma.
The Challenge
The existing system didn’t allow partners to do the basics themselves, like checking stock, placing orders or requesting stock rotations, without emailing or phoning an account manager. Each of the seven brands had its own processes, and there was almost no data or research on what partners actually needed.
So the challenge was to design one self-serve service that worked for every brand, every market and every partner, without disrupting sales while we did it.
Process
My
Flow
💬
🗺️
📈
🖌️
🎨
🧪
6. Testing & rollout
Myself & the wider team ran what felt like every test on the planet! Automated technical testing, A/B tests, hypercare periods etc. I was responsible for managing the pilot tests and graduated rollout across the markets, tracking adoption and operational impact — which is how we got to +120% adoption after 2 years.
- Mapping & blueprinting
I mapped the real internal service experience highlighting all the inefficiencies and broken links, mapped the data flows with BAs, & untangled permissions & compliance problems with Legal. My output: Business workflow
maps & "As Is" service blueprints
- Designing the detail
I drove focused design sprints with UXUI designers and the software development team, using rapid prototyping and iterative user testing to create a new B2B experience that customers & staff would find easy & enjoyable to use.
4. Designing the high-level experience
Onto the design... working with the BAs, I created new “To Be” service blueprints and user flows (for both external customers and internal teams) mapping out how the new service would work - rapid testing and iterating along the way.
- Business case to C-Suite for approval
I owned the digital workstreams of the business case, presenting evidence, risks, and phased investment options to senior leadership. The result was C-suite alignment and a mandate to lead the programme across EMEA.
- Multi-market discovery
Spoke to customers and teams across EMEA, shadowed sales reps, and pulled apart wildly different workflows to understand why everyone was solving the same problems differently.
A screengrab of a comprehensive set of user stories that I created on the back of 2 rounds of user research with both internal and external stakeholders. These user stories covered the whole customer user journey, from first awareness to long-term customer retention. It also broke out whether the user story was global or market-specific.
These user stories acted as the first source of truth for the business to define & understand the scale of the problem. I used these user stories to work with the COO of Pentland Brands (and his team) to prioritise which were they key problems to solve in this project (using a matrix of business profitability and impact on the user). This both formed the project scope, and also the subsequent roadmap for later development.
the hurdles 🚧... and how i overcame them
⏱️ Legacy platforms & a huge time crunch
The ERP system we were using was creaking at the seams causing problems for staff and Customers alike. And the contract was ending, with no option (or desire!) to be renewed. Time was limited.
I worked with the C-Suite sponsors to create a very clear project scope, and a process through which any proposed change to priorities could be decided on quickly, with minimum beaurocracy.
Conflicting stakeholders 🤬
5 different brand teams, all with their own Sales, Service, Logistics, and Legal processes. All who naturally thought their process was the best...
I set up a cross-functional design council with a clear RACI. Using the user stories above I fought for alignment on the common user stories that would benefit all brands & markets. Then we went after those together.
Operational readiness & change management ⚠️️
There’s never a good time for a huge change like this. Everyone was worried about something, and usually with good reason. I had to manage this replatform with minimal disruption to sales
I co-designed with frontline teams, built walkthroughs into the product, and set OKRs (adoption, self-serve, ticket deflection) so operations could see the impact and adjust.
🔐 GDPR, privacy & role-based access ️
The ERP system we were using was creaking at the seams causing problems for staff and Customers alike. And the contract was ending, with no option (or desire!) to be renewed. Time was limited.
I worked with the C-Suite sponsors to create a very clear project scope, and a process through which any proposed change to priorities could be decided on quickly, with minimum beaurocracy.
Legacy platforms & zero-disruption migration
The challenge was a patchwork of market-specific builds and workarounds that made consistency and maintenance hard.
I designed an 80/20 model—80% global, 20% customisable—with light localisation rules and a simple governance checklist so markets could tailor within bounds while keeping a sustainable global process.
🇪🇺 Cross-cultural collaboration & ways of working
There’s never a good time for a huge change like this. Everyone was worried about something, and usually with good reason. I had to manage this replatform with minimal disruption to sales
I co-designed with frontline teams, built walkthroughs into the product, and set OKRs (adoption, self-serve, ticket deflection) so operations could see the impact and adjust.
Examples from my business workflow user flows that I built through my research with various internal teams. I then turned these into the first “As Is” service blueprints to map the external customer journey with the internal processes.
I used these service blueprints (there were several blueprints, each covering a key business process) to demonstrate the pain points and inefficiencies to senior stakeholders and budget holders, to highlight where we should focus our efforts and where the largest business gains could be found.
A view of the working Figma design file covering all the possible website change states, error messages, variations etc. The working prototype is available to view through the button above.
These screens, along with the prototype were used predominantly by the Engineers and BAs as they built the portal. The detail shown through the many screen variations covered all the user stories that the portal had to cater for as a Customer moved through their online journey.
How I led the design team
The existing system didn’t allow partners to do the basics themselves, like checking stock, placing orders or requesting stock rotations, without emailing or phoning an account manager. Each of the seven brands had its own processes, and there was almost no data or research on what partners actually needed.
So the challenge was to design one self-serve service that worked for every brand, every market and every partner, without disrupting sales while we did it.
Next Case Study
Pentland Connect
Five sports brands on one self-serve B2B portal. Turning complexity into a unified platform, leading to +120% uptake by Pentland’s retailers & trade partners.
A selection of designs showing the Pentland Connect ordering portal. Designed by myself and my team of five. I set the design direction, designed hands-on alongside the team, and signed off every screen before it went to engineering. Handoff to Engineering was done using Figma Dev Mode.
Overview
Pentland Brands is the owner of global sports brands such as Speedo, Berghaus, Canterbury and more, selling to retailers and trade partners all over the world. But ordering from them was a mess: every market had its own portal, spreadsheets and phone-order workarounds, with most processes relying on Account Managers or Customer Service Reps.
There was very little data or user research to help guide the design of the service, and design-thinking wasn’t at the table at all. Due to these inefficiencies it was impossible to scale the service.
I led Pentland’s first ever user research with its B2B customers, then led the team that redesigned the whole service, end to end, as both lead designer and team manager.
The live portal can only be accessed by account holders, but you can view one of our early prototypes.
view Prototype
My Role
Senior Digital Experience Manager at Pentland Brands. A player-coach role: Lead designer and design team manager leading a team of 5 people.
Core Team
Global Product Manager
Senior Product Designer
Product Designer
Business Analyst
Wider Team
COO
5 x Brand Marketing Heads
Software Engineering Team
Legal Team
B2B Customer Service Team
Timeline
Discovery to launch: approx 10 months, then a graduated rollout of 1 year.
Methods
User research, internal research & workshops, service design, product design, information architecture, stakeholder management, business case development.
Tools
Figma, Miro, UserTesting.com
Impacts
We saw an uptake of the service of
+120%
over the following 2 years.
The launch of the Customer Portal transformed the way this arm of the organisation worked. From slow, manual, & cumbersome, to intuitive, & fast.
5 sports brands
on one, self-serve portal.
A mockup of the homepage of Pentland Connect on launch, the self-serve Customer portal. Designed in Figma.
The Challenge
The existing system didn’t allow partners to do the basics themselves without contacting an account manager, like checking stock, placing orders or requesting stock rotations. Each of the five brands had its own processes, and there was no collated data or research on what partners actually needed from a digital service.
So the challenge was to design one self-serve service that worked for every brand, every market and every partner, without disrupting sales while we did it.
Process
My
Flow
💬
🗺️
📈
🖌️
🎨
🧪
Testing & rollout
Myself & the wider team ran what felt like every test on the planet! Automated technical testing, A/B tests, hypercare periods etc. I was responsible for managing the pilot tests and graduated rollout across the markets, tracking adoption and operational impact — which is how we got to +120% adoption after 2 years.
Mapping & blueprinting
I mapped the real internal service experience highlighting all the inefficiencies and broken links, mapped the data flows with BAs, & untangled permissions & compliance problems with Legal.
My output: Business workflow maps & "As Is" service blueprints
Designing the detail
I drove focused design sprints with UXUI designers and the software development team, using rapid prototyping and iterative user testing to create a new B2B experience that customers & staff would find easy & enjoyable to use.
Designing the high-level experience
Onto the design... working with the BAs, I created new “To Be” service blueprints and user flows (for both external customers and internal teams) mapping out how the new service would work - rapid testing and iterating along the way.
Business case to C-Suite for approval
Myself and the Global Product Manager owned the end-to-end business case, and positioned the discovery findings in terms of adoption, efficiency, cost savings & scalability. The output: C-suite signed off our proposal for a multi-market redesign.
Multi-market discovery
I led the external & internal research, speaking to customers & teams across EMEA through user interviews, letting them have a good rant about their roles, tasks, blockers, and frustrations!
My output: a mega-map of user stories & customer journeys.
4.
2.
6.
3.
1.
5.
A screengrab of a comprehensive set of user stories that I created on the back of 2 rounds of user research with both internal and external stakeholders. These user stories covered the whole customer user journey, from first awareness to long-term customer retention. It also broke out whether the user story was global or market-specific.
These user stories acted as the first source of truth for the business to define & understand the scale of the problem. I used these user stories to work with the COO of Pentland Brands (and his team) to prioritise which were they key problems to solve in this project (using a matrix of business profitability and impact on the user). This both formed the project scope, and also the subsequent roadmap for later development.
the hurdles 🚧... and how i overcame them
⏱️ Legacy platforms & a huge time crunch
The ERP system we were using was creaking at the seams causing problems for staff and Customers alike. And the contract was ending, with no option (or desire!) to be renewed. Time was limited.
I worked with the C-Suite sponsors to create a clear project scope, and a process through which any proposed change to priorities could be decided on quickly, with minimum bureaucracy.
🤬 Conflicting stakeholders
5 different brand teams, all with their own Sales, Service, Logistics, and Legal processes. All who naturally thought their process was the best...
I set up a cross-functional design council with a clear RACI. Using the user stories above I fought for alignment on the common user stories that would benefit all brands & markets. Then we went after those together.
⚠ Operational readiness & change management
There’s never a good time for a change like this. Everyone was worried about something, and often with good reason. I had to manage this project with minimal disruption to sales and customer experience.
I co-designed with frontline teams, built walkthroughs into the timeline, and set short-term KPIs so any negative impact was seen & adjusted to quickly.
🔐 GDPR, privacy & role-based access ️
Due to the multi-market nature of the project, the question of data ownership and locale-specific laws became a big hurdle to overcome. The existing experience had fragmented flows that risked breaching GDPR and local rules.
I worked with BAs to map the data flows, and with Legal to set the right permissions and data access, in line with local data laws.
🌎 Global consistency vs multi-market localisation
The challenge was a patchwork of market-specific builds and workarounds that made consistency and maintenance hard.
I designed an 80/20 model—80% global, 20% customisable—with light localisation rules and a simple governance checklist so markets could tailor within bounds while keeping a sustainable global process.
🇪🇺 Cross-cultural collaboration & ways of working
The challenge was aligning teams across EMEA with different communication styles, decision norms, and risk tolerance.
I set shared rituals (decision logs, design reviews), used plain-language artefacts, appointed local champions, and ran async-first updates with market-specific demos and testing to respect local context while keeping one direction.
Examples from my business workflow user flows that I built through my research with various internal teams. I then turned these into the first “As Is” service blueprints to map the external customer journey with the internal processes.
I used these service blueprints (there were several blueprints, each covering a key business process) to demonstrate the pain points and inefficiencies to senior stakeholders and budget holders, to highlight where we should focus our efforts and where the largest business gains could be found.
A view of the working Figma design file covering all the possible website change states, error messages, variations etc. The working prototype is available to view through the button above.
These screens, along with the prototype were used predominantly by the Engineers and BAs as they built the portal. The detail shown through the many screen variations covered all the user stories that the portal had to cater for as a Customer moved through their online journey.
How I led the design team
I set out to create a culture that was fun and supportive, but also hardworking and proud of what we made. Senior designers were empowered to work autonomously, and more junior designers had support while being stretched.
Day to day, I led daily stand-ups and weekly design sprints. I gave out work according to how each designer wanted to grow and be challenged, not just whoever was free. All designs came through me for final sign-off. These design reviews kept the quality bar high and gave everyone space to learn from each other’s work. Because I stayed closely involved in the day-to-day work, they didn’t become a bottleneck. I also shared my own designs in these reviews for the team’s feedback.
With five different brands’ needs and opinions flying around, I set up a design council with clear stage gates and feedback rounds. I ran these sessions without the rest of the team, to protect them from unclear feedback and meeting overload.
Next Case Study