Célio

Unified digital retail experience for a 550-store network, connecting e-commerce, mobile journeys and store-related services.

Role

Lead · Omnichannel · Design ops

Challenge

550 stores. No unified experience.

Scope

E-commerce · Mobile · DS · Retail

Impact

550 stores. 40 countries. 1 system.

01 · Situation

550 stores. Multiple digital touchpoints. No unified experience.

550 stores, 40 countries, multiple digital touchpoints grown independently. E-commerce, mobile and store-connected services had no shared experience logic. The result was fragmentation at scale.

✕ Channel fragmentation

E-commerce, mobile and store-connected services had grown independently with no shared experience logic

✕ Inconsistent journeys

Customer experience varied significantly depending on entry point and channel

✕ Scale complexity

550 stores across 40 countries with different operational realities to account for

✕ No shared language

Design and development teams had no common component baseline across channels

The real problem

02 · Approach

Structure first. Consistency follows.

Channel architecture first. Shared design language second. Store-connected services designed as primary, not secondary features.

E-commerce redesign

Tension

A growing platform without a coherent information architecture.

Navigation, product discovery and purchase journeys had grown in different directions without a governing IA logic.

Call

Rebuild the IA around customer intent, not category structure.

IA rebuilt around how customers actually shop, by occasion, by style, by need, not by internal product category structure.

Result

A coherent e-commerce experience aligned with shopping behaviour.

Coherent e-commerce experience aligned with shopping behaviour. Reduced journey friction at the points that matter most.

Mobile experience

Tension

Mobile was an afterthought, not a starting point.

Mobile had been adapted from desktop, not designed for the contexts in which Célio's customers actually use it.

Call

Design mobile journeys around the specific behaviours of fashion retail on-the-go.

Redesigned for on-the-go retail: availability checking, store locator, click & collect as primary features, not afterthoughts.

Result

A mobile experience designed for how customers actually shop.

Online intent connected to in-store reality. The channel became genuinely useful, not just convenient.

Design system

Tension

No shared design language across channels and teams.

Different teams, different platforms, no shared component logic. Visual inconsistency accumulated across every touchpoint.

Call

Build a shared design language that works across all channels.

Shared component library as the foundation for all digital surfaces, absorbing 40-country operational variation while maintaining consistency.

Result

One design language. 550 stores. 40 countries.

One design language. 550 stores. 40 countries. Quality maintainable at scale.

Take away

03 · Outcomes

What unification produced.

A fragmented multi-channel presence unified into a coherent omnichannel experience, at the scale of 550 stores across 40 countries.

Before→After

Channels grown independently

→

Unified omnichannel experience logic

No shared design language

→

1 component system. 40 countries.

Online and store disconnected

→

Store-connected services integrated

stores connected

550

single digital experience logic across the network

countries

international rollout on a shared design system

channels unified

e-commerce, mobile and store-connected services

design language

shared component system across all digital touchpoints

04 · Takeaways

Three things this confirmed.

Omnichannel coherence is an architecture problem before it is a design problem.

Scale amplifies every inconsistency. The shared DS was not a nice-to-have. It was the only way to make quality maintainable.

Mobile in retail needs store context to be complete. Connecting availability and intent made the channel genuinely useful.

Closing

Omnichannel is not a feature set. It is a structural commitment.

Unifying 550 stores required structural decisions. Channel relationships, shared language, store-connected logic. Not just design consistency.

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