While working at 160 Over 90, I was presented the opportunity to work with global retail giant The Athlete’s Foot. They came to us for a brand concept, something that they could implement in all of their different stores worldwide. What we gave them was a concept centered around the mind of an athlete. By incorporating everything from focused ideas to random tangents into the illustrations, we began to show the complexity and range of an athlete’s thought at any given time. Something that athletes can relate to.
The Athlete’s Foot consists of somewhere around 400 stores world-wide, and is the largest completely franchisee-owned footwear chain in the world. That creates a huge problem when it comes to web. Franchisees all own and operate their own stores, meaning that each owner does their own ordering, has their own style of management, and doesn’t necessarily have to do anything. So how do you get hundreds of franchisees worldwide on the same page? Give them their own page.
When designing the website, we decided to create a balance of content that is dictated by the franchisees, and corporate-driven content. Meaning each store has their own page that can be managed by the local owner, and even gives him the option of linking his or her other stores. He or her can then add or subtract as much information as he or she wants similar to a myspace or facebook layout. Owners who don’t want to constantly update info can create a simple page with essential information they will never have to change again while computer-savvy owners can update their page with as much changing content as they like. The backgrounds are maintained by TAF at a corporate level to ensure that their seasonal messaging is being displayed at all times, giving the franchise owners a choice between which seasonal campaign they would like to display.
Direction: Dan Shepelavy, Darryl Cilli
Writing: Brendan Quinn
Design: Gregory Hubacek
