Case study

GABARSHOP

A creator merch store I built, ran, and never fully left. Four years inside the team — from packing boxes to redesigning the full product experience. Six years on, the client still calls me back when something genuinely new needs to be made. Live at gabarshop.com.

Period 2020 — present

My role Product, E-commerce

Areas

Product Strategy E-commerce Merch Design

Why

I joined a top YouTube creator's team in 2020 — millions of subscribers, high-volume merch operation. Started by doing whatever needed doing: picking materials at the factory, receiving deliveries in the office, sorting stock by size and colour, packing orders by hand, handing them off to couriers. Walking the product through every link of the chain — from material to recipient — was my real education. By the time the storefront needed a redesign, I knew what people ordered, what they returned, what they were proud to own — because I'd been in the chain from the first link to the last.

What

I rebuilt the store's UX and UI from scratch. The original site was a flat product catalog — no structure, no story, no reason to stay. I introduced information architecture that gave the store a personality: blocks about the team, the production process, behind-the-scenes content. Merch that felt like it came from a factory started feeling like it came from people. The strongest co-creation mechanic: subscribers submitted t-shirt designs — drawn by hand or made digitally — the community voted, the winner went into production. The audience wasn't just buying — they were co-authoring. As the team expanded, I naturally transitioned into a Product Lead role. When a new designer was brought in to refresh the UI, I directed the validation process, ensuring the new visuals aligned with our established UX architecture and conversion goals before we shipped the update.

How

The community channel — grown from zero to 10,000 subscribers through factory footage, material polls, design votes, audience-driven giveaways — became the research layer. Every poll, every reaction to a prototype photo, every comment was signal. I used it to make product decisions: what to add to the catalog, what to retire, what format the next giveaway would take. The store's depth — 40+ SKUs, styled packaging, gift certificates, seasonal drops — wasn't from a strategy document. It grew out of a constant dialogue between the product and its audience. After leaving full-time in 2024, I continued on-call — called back when the brief requires more than a new colourway.

Process & outcome