We’ve all been there. You find something you love online, head to the store, and it’s nowhere to be found. American Apparel was losing customers in that moment of frustration. So our challenge was clear: connect online and in-store shopping in a way that felt simple, seamless, and actually helpful.

I led UX design in collaboration with our client and agency team, working closely with stakeholders to rethink how customers could browse and reserve products across channels. I focused on keeping things fast, intuitive, and true to the brand’s tone. Confident but never complicated.

Online inventory didn’t always match what was on the racks. That mismatch led to lost sales and annoyed customers, and store associates were stuck fielding endless “Do you have this in a teal?” phone calls. Everyone wanted a better way, but no one wanted to rebuild the entire system.

To address these challenges, I designed a three-part system:

Customer Reservation Interface
Allowed customers to browse products, select their preferred store, and reserve items for pickup.

Sales Associate Dashboard
Provided store staff with real-time updates on reservations, enabling them to prepare items in advance.

Administrative Portal
Offered management tools for tracking reservations, inventory levels, and sales analytics.

To really make reservations work, we had to meet store associates where they already were, the POS. So we built a lightweight extension that plugged right into their existing flow. No new logins. No extra training. Just a simple way to pull up a customer’s reservation, confirm pickup, and mark it complete, all while ringing up the sale.

It kept things fast, familiar, and totally frictionless. Store teams barely had to think about it, which was exactly the point.

While the customer flow was key, the real win was what we built for the store teams. We designed a lightweight admin tool that made it easy to view incoming reservations, update statuses, and keep things moving, without the usual friction.

Search was fast. Filters made sense. Alerts popped up when they should. It worked the way retail moves: quickly, clearly, and with zero fluff.

The magic was in the simplicity. Customers got what they needed with fewer hoops to jump through. Store teams felt supported instead of overwhelmed. And the whole thing rolled out without disrupting operations. It solved a very real problem in a very real way.

This was just the beginning. Given more time, we could have evolved the feature into something bigger like personalized recommendations, loyalty perks, or a fully mobile in-store experience. But even this first step moved the needle. It showed that with the right UX, even small changes can make a big impact.