Launching Damen + Hastings
How a small RAA team built the company’s first owned brand, from a Chicago pop-up to Kohl’s.
At a glance
Challenge
RAA wanted a company-owned brand that didn’t feel corporate.
What I did
Named it, built the brand book with a small team, helped set the identity and product standards, directed packaging, and launched with Chicago pop-ups.
Result
Grew from pop-ups to direct-to-consumer and a national wholesale partnership with Kohl’s.
A company brand that didn’t feel corporate
RAA leadership asked a small team to build a company-owned brand from the ground up. I was a core member of that team, named the brand, and led its brand development.
The brand is named after the Chicago corner where RAA’s century-old building, a former leather goods factory, still stands. It needed to feel independent and part of the neighborhood. Working with design, product, merchandising and leadership, I helped build the visual identity, brand guidelines and product standards around craft, material quality and accessible prices.
Writing the brand down first
Before the first product, I worked with a small team on the brand book. It sets out the story, mission and values, maps Damen + Hastings against the brands around it, gives the voice a set of always, yet and never rules, and builds five lifestyle moods, a pricing philosophy and a picture of the customer. It gave the product and packaging work that followed a shared reference point.
- Trim
- 8.5 × 11 in
- Extent
- 40 pages plus covers
- Sections
- Story, platform, voice, pricing, customer, identity
- Team
- Built with a small RAA team
Photography in the book is mood and reference imagery.
A lean line, done well
The book’s line list philosophy kept the range lean: a few core constructions in good raw materials, with newness coming through color and material updates instead of new silhouettes. Concepts like a magnetic tech folio and a clean backpack explored where the brand could stretch, while the core line focused on wallets and card cases.
Telling the story at the shelf
A new brand has to explain itself in a few seconds at retail. Our packaging designer rendered the in-store shop, fixtures and packaging from my input and direction: a branded shop with the mission front and center, hang cards for belts and ties, and window boxes that show the wallet inside.
Renderings by our packaging designer, from my input and direction.
More packagingSix more renderings, from belts to collar stays
From one pop-up to national retail
We launched with Chicago pop-ups, refined the model, and grew into direct-to-consumer and then a national wholesale partnership with Kohl’s, including a Made-in-USA collaboration with Pintrill. Along the way, I helped supply the product content for the brand’s online pages.
The line list we presented to Kohl’s covered wallets, card cases, pouches, a sling bag, and brushed twill caps and ivies.
The Kohl’s line listSix more pages from the line
