686 Technical Apparel

Transforming a snow legacy into a year-round outdoor brand.

As Creative Director at 686, I led the repositioning of the brand beyond winter; establishing a unified creative system across product, campaign, and commerce. The result: an apparel line that started as overbought quickly turned into a line that needed frequent replenishment, a women’s strategy that doubled DTC orders, and performance marketing systems that scaled spend while maintaining efficiency.

The Brand Shift: From Outerwear to Outdoor

The Challenge

686 built its reputation on technical snow outerwear. As the brand expanded beyond winter into broader outdoor categories, storytelling became disconnected, visual language lacked cohesion, and execution turned reactive rather than strategic.

The challenge wasn't seasonal expansion—it was creating alignment across a growing brand.

I established an outdoor-first creative framework that enabled 686 to scale beyond winter:

  • Brand positioning that shifted from snow-focused to outdoor-first

  • Storytelling frameworks, visual language, and creative guidelines

  • Performance creative principles balancing brand integrity with conversion

The Solution

The outdoor-first creative framework established clear positioning principles and visual language that unified how 686 showed up across all touchpoints.

Strategy translated into creative guidelines that clarified and strengthened the brand’s expression.

Measurable Results

The apparel line was heavily over-inventoried when I arrived—the brand was considering reducing the category entirely.

I repositioned apparel through the outdoor-first framework, launching a unified campaign and commerce strategy that connected the line to the broader brand narrative.

Result: Within one year, core products went from overbought to replenishment-required. The brand committed to scaling the category.

Women’s Strategy: Building from the Ground Up

The women's initiative began with ambiguity—no defined brief, just recognition that something was missing. I started at the beginning: research, pattern recognition, diagnosis. I identified the core problems: Fit systems were undefined, silhouettes were either reactive or outdated, and storytelling was disconnected from how women actually use the product.

The Challenge
The Solution

I built the framework from this insight:

  • Defining fit language within the 686 system

  • Clarifying and strategizing contemporary silhouettes

  • Solving long-standing customer pain points

  • Creating storytelling frameworks that reflect how women participate

This research and data-driven approach organized into a cohesive system—creating clarity that could scale across product development, campaigns, and merchandising.

Research from surveys, reps, and athlete collaboration informed the women’s strategic foundation, clarifying key pain points and opportunities.

Internal and competitive analysis defined a framework that clarified fit language and silhouette strategy across the brand.

Product storytelling proves the women’s strategy in practice—demonstrating fit, performance, and silhouette across sizes.

Outline Campaign: Strategy Becomes Creative Execution

The Outline campaign became the first intentional expression of the women’s system, proving the framework in DTC channels through technical credibility, modern silhouette, and alignment with 686 athletes.

The Result:

  • Strong cross-channel performance

  • Renewed internal confidence

  • Doubled DTC orders for 26/27 season

The Systems at Work

With clear positioning, visual language, and storytelling in place, the team could execute with consistency and confidence—creating cohesive campaigns across channels.

Performance Marketing: Building Infrastructure for Scale

I built 686's performance marketing infrastructure from scratch—establishing workflows that enabled efficient, sustainable growth.

When I arrived: no foundation, reactive creative, decisions made by throwing darts at ideas.

What I built: Template-based production systems, performance creative principles, data-informed decision frameworks, and cross-functional workflows that connected creative to business outcomes.

The result: A system that enabled continuous improvement. The team could increase marketing spend without decreasing efficiency, test and learn systematically, and make strategic decisions rather than random bets.

Ultimately, this work was about building structure; establishing creative frameworks and systems that enabled 686 to scale with clarity and coherence.

Results:

  • Repositioned 686 as a year-round outdoor brand

  • Converted overbought inventory into sustained replenishment within one year

  • Outerwear growth at DTC: 2023: 27%, 2024: 17%, 2025: 29%

  • Built the women’s strategy, doubling key DTC orders for 26/27

  • Established performance marketing infrastructure that enabled marketing spend to scale efficiently

The Impact