In 1998, I was the junior designer at a 4-person graphic shop in Pioneer Square, Seattle. We had often teamed up with a local entrepreneur to build sites for area businesses. Quickly, we decided that a better growth opportunity was to start up a new ecommerce company, focused exclusively on outdoor gear and apparel: Altrec.com.
Starting from scratch, we had to hack our way into all the building blocks of an ecommerce site:
By 2013, we had redesigned each of the site's properties: Altrec, Outlet, and Deal, to be responsive and mobile-first. With approx 40% of our traffic coming in on a phone or tablet, we needed to treat our touch-based traffic with respect. Because of our small design team, promotional assets were built to be reused across multiple areas: desktop, mobile, email & social updates.
