Seagram's Escapes Holiday Marketplace
Supporting 1,600+ Black-Owned Businesses Through Strategic UX Design
Creating a user-friendly marketplace platform to showcase and support Black-owned small businesses during the 2020 holiday season, requiring scalable design and rapid development.
- Role
- UX Designer & Web Developer
- Timeline:
- 6 weeks ◊ Fall/Winter 2020
- Team ◊ FIFCO USA
- Seagram Escape Brand Team, Denise Nadal
- Impact
-
- exposed 1600+ small business owners to a national audience, growing their customer base
- increased site traffic by 20% and earned national media coverage.
Challenge
In 2020, Seagram's Escapes wanted to create meaningful impact by supporting Black-owned small businesses during the holiday shopping season. They needed a comprehensive marketplace platform that could:
- Showcase a large number of businesses (initially unknown scale, ultimately 1,600+)
- Enable easy product discovery across diverse business categories
- Launch quickly to maximize holiday shopping impact
- Align with brand standards while serving a social good mission
- Scale efficiently without extensive backend infrastructure
Research & Discovery
Stakeholder Collaboration
Worked directly with the Seagram's Escapes Brand team to understand:
- Brand objectives: Supporting Black small business owners while strengthening brand loyalty
- User goals: Holiday shoppers seeking unique products from Black-owned businesses
- Technical constraints: Tight timeline, need for scalability, existing brand system integration
- Content requirements: Business applications with website links and product pages
Technical Feasibility Analysis
- Conducted initial assessment of proposed features against timeline and resource constraints, establishing a realistic scope that - balanced ambition with deliverability.
User Experience Considerations
Primary Users: Holiday shoppers looking for unique gifts from Black-owned businesses User Needs:
- Easy browsing and discovery across categories
- Clear business and product information
- Trust signals and business credibility
- Mobile-responsive experience
Success Metrics:
- Number of businesses successfully featured
- User engagement and discoverability
- Traffic generation to featured businesses
- Brand awareness and media coverage
- Technical performance and scalability
Design Process
Information Architecture & Wireframing
Collaborated with the brand team to establish the site structure:
- Homepage: Featured business spotlight with clear value proposition
- Category pages: Organized browsing by business type
- Business directory: Comprehensive listing with search/filter capabilities
- About/FAQ pages: Mission explanation and user guidance
Created initial wireframes that balanced business showcase needs with user browsing patterns, iterating collaboratively until the structure met both user and business requirements.
Visual Design System Integration
Challenge: Maintain Seagram's Escapes brand consistency while creating a distinct marketplace identity.
Approach: Developed component variations that aligned with existing brand guidelines while optimizing for:
- Business spotlight components for homepage features
- Product gallery layouts for category browsing
- Business profile cards with consistent information hierarchy
- Search and filter interfaces for easy discovery
Deliverables: Multiple layout and component design variations, allowing stakeholders to choose options that best balanced brand alignment with marketplace functionality.
Responsive Design Considerations
Designed mobile-first components to ensure accessibility across devices, crucial for holiday shopping behavior patterns.
Key Learnings
Scalable Design Systems
Working with 1,600+ businesses taught me the importance of designing flexible, scalable component systems that maintain consistency while accommodating diverse content types and quality levels.
Technical Problem-Solving
The web scraping solution demonstrated how technical creativity can solve UX problems - by standardizing inconsistent data sources, we created a cohesive user experience despite varied input quality.
Social Impact Design
This project reinforced how thoughtful UX design can amplify social good initiatives, making meaningful impact more accessible to users while achieving business objectives.
Performance as User Experience
The static site generation approach proved that technical architecture decisions directly impact user experience - fast loading times were crucial for holiday shopping success.
Collaborative Design Process
Working closely with brand stakeholders while maintaining user-centered design principles showed how collaborative iteration can achieve both business and user goals effectively.
Reflections
This project demonstrated how strategic UX design combined with innovative technical solutions can create meaningful social impact while achieving significant business success.
