RESULT
BUSINESS
- 14 brand adaptations delivered across outdoor gear, restaurants, hardware, pet supplies, and luxury retail (3 owned end-to-end, 9 co-designed)
- Component system cut per-brand onboarding from months to weeks
- Concepts that enabled the client to pitch to a 9-brand holding company
- New revenue stream through white-label licensing; market expansion beyond grocery retail
DESIGN SYSTEM
- Framework validated across vastly different brand personalities
- Component library reduced per-brand scope from full conceptualization to template adaptation
BACKGROUND
As one of three product designers, I owned end-to-end design for three brand adaptations (Globetrotter, Peter Pane, BauSpezi) and co-designed nine additional brands. I also led the development of the component-based system that enabled the team to shift from deep conceptualizations to rapid brand adaptation.
Denns BioMarkt's loyalty app worked well for one brand. The client saw an opportunity to monetize the existing backend by licensing it to other companies, but had no design framework to do it efficiently.
The brief: create a flexible design system that could support diverse brand personalities without rebuilding the product from scratch for each client.
The challenges were concrete: no process for rapid brand adaptation, unknown scalability of the existing UX across different industries, tight pitch timelines, and resource constraints that made full custom development per brand impossible.
PROCESS
Phase 1: Deep Conceptualization (5 Brands)
Before building any system, I needed to understand what was fixed and what was flexible. I analyzed the core loyalty app mechanics and mapped elements into two categories:
UNIVERSAL
- Points tracking and redemption
- Store locator functionality
- Promotional content display
- User account management
BRAND-SPECIFIC
- Visual identity and color schemes
- Content types (recipes, event listings, etc.)
- Loyalty mechanics (points, stamps, etc.)
- Industry-specific features
This framework guided every subsequent adaptation decision.
Featured Brand Adaptations
Globetrotter (Outdoor Gear)
Challenge: Adapt a grocery loyalty app for adventure enthusiasts.
Solution: Transformed the app into an outdoor lifestyle platform. Homepage featuring outdoor events, seasonal gear promotions, and adventure content. Events screen with in-store workshops, guided hikes, and gear-testing events. Offers page with category-based, seasonally relevant promotions.
Core insight: outdoor customers value experiences over transactions. The design shifted emphasis from point accumulation to event participation and community.
Peter Pane (Burger Chain)
Challenge: Adapt the points system for fast-food loyalty patterns.
Solution: Pivoted the loyalty model to stamp-card mechanics ("Buy 4 meals, get 1 free") with visual progress tracking, pre-ordering integration to reduce wait times, and location features showing nearby restaurants with wait times and reservation options.
Core insight: fast-food loyalty is about convenience and instant gratification, not long-term point accumulation. Different mechanic, same underlying infrastructure.
Phase 2: Rapid Adaptation (9-Brand Holding Company)
After the initial concepts, the client wanted to pitch to a 9-brand holding company. The new challenge: deliver homepage designs for hardware stores, pet supplies, and garden centers with tighter timelines and smaller budgets.
The deep conceptualization work paid off here. I formalized what had been intuitive into a repeatable system:
Core layout templates for quick customization
Brand-specific color and typography systems
Industry-appropriate content modules
Reusable UI components with brand flexibility
This shifted per-brand work from full design conceptualization to template adaptation.
BauSpezi (Hardware Chain)
As the holding company's primary brand, BauSpezi received more detailed treatment: a product-focused homepage with tools, seasonal projects, and DIY inspiration, and a content strategy where how-to guides and project galleries replace recipe content.
REFLECTION
The most valuable thing this project taught me wasn't a design skill; it was a systems skill. Designing for 14 brands means designing for unknown future requirements, not just the brands in front of you. The component structure had to be flexible enough to accommodate industries I hadn't seen yet.
The other lesson: the same loyalty mechanic reads completely differently depending on the industry context it lives in. A stamp card in a burger chain feels natural; the same mechanic in a luxury retailer would feel cheap. Context shapes perception more than the mechanism itself.
