Clano Apparel

HEAD OF DESIGN

2021 – present

In the time of digitalization and increasing influencer marketing, the professional mountain biker & blogger, Elias Schwärzler, established his own online store with the brand CLANO plus the online academy (SENDERS Academy) for nascent professional mountain bikers. After more than 20 years in fast fashion retail, I was aspiring a professional and private challenge aiming to grow with new teams, ideas and corporate values from scratch to expand my creativity and skills in a different niche. As head of design, I am building the team organization and brand from zero. I am responsible for all, visual, product, user experience, brand and communication design plus supplier management, production, marketing, distribution, sales and aftersales. I had the privilege to bring life into the brand by designing the memorable CLANO monogram that burnt into customers´ heads & hearts. I created a thriving design culture, supervising eight collections end-to-end within first six months besides supporting the world record (“Mission 300”) for Elias Schwärzler whereby he reached the speed record of 272 km/h with a bike on 22nd of May 2022.

With this bike Elias Schwärzler reached the world speed record of 272 km/h at the Lausitzring on 29th of May in 2022

Please note that all the work I am sharing here is currently or previously released public material

THE ROAD to Mission 300

• Finding a pattern design which symbolize the insane speed

• Color concept & paint effects

• Pattern arrangement sketch

• Finalized pattern design

• Finalized pattern arrangement on frame

• Final paintjob result

• Items from the additional Team & Fan collection

Besides implementing significant organizational changes, the most impactful project represented the set-up and creative staging of the world record attempt whereby I acted as spearhead of the development for the design of this mission including bike, team & fan collection. I evolved the marketing strategy plus monitoring event management. I supported promotion & sales of the exclusively fan collection at the event taken place over 3 days in Hohenems, Austria. The world record is captured in a documentary cinema movie whereas I am mentioned by name in the credits of the movie.

As head of design, I am responsible for the product-lifecycle-management bringing the product to life through sketching and illustration (physical & digital) until finalized sample and launch. I am considering short-term and long-term planning regarding distribution, quantities and pricing for online sale and POS. Cooperating hand-in-hand with CEO, we are deriving measures based on daily turnover, customer surveys and sales trends enabling to find root causes optimizing customer satisfaction. Besides, I am managing the supplier portfolio having sourced a stellar team of approx. 15 distributors from the ground focusing long-range relationships as well as quality assurance and improvement. In this context, I am responsible for the expansion of brand identity at EMEA level, gaining customers from Switzerland and Italy as further main target groups with sales growth of 8% by first drop.