Q Clothier is an upscale men’s clothing store with two locations in Dallas and one in Houston. Rye51 is their casual brand.
Raja Ratan of Q Clothier wanted to create an app to better reach his busy customers on the go. Walking into a Q Clothier store is an experience and with all the selection, (and the wet bar!) you may want to set aside an hour or so for your visit. Raja and his team treat their customers well and really take the time to get to know you and your style.
Raja wanted to reach his customers on their phones. He wanted to be able to send them clothing suggestions on the go, so that he could have the ones they liked ready when they were ready to stop by for the full Q Clothier experience.
Q Clothier and Rye51 customers are the kind of people who don’t look at the price tag because they know they can afford it. There aren’t any price tags that I saw in the store. Selling them suits and shoes and accessories was never a problem. Raja wanted to optimize the experience. The objective here was to make a beautiful app.
Fortunately for the project (and for Q51!), we started with a solid brand from a local shop in Dallas. The typography was already impeccable with Gotham and Didot, and the color pallete was already set. This was a great opportunity to focus specifically on interface design and hone my skills as a digital designer.
The premise of the app is that the user is presented with a picture of an item in stock that they might like to buy. A swipe to the right puts it in their cart, a swipe to the left tells the customer’s salesperson that they’re not interested in the item. Rinse and repeat.
After a month of hard work, I revealed the UI to the client and they loved the look and feel. After a few rounds of edits, we ended up with a full UI design for a Q51 iphone and android app.
This project is what got me started in UI design. I found that I enjoy thinking about how people use their personal technology and how a brand might interact with them in those digital spaces. Smart phones are amazing, fascinating devices by which many of us gather information about the world around us. It’s important for brands to engage customers in that space, in the customer’s own terms. I was fortunate to start in a very forgiving environment; if a customer has the app, they’re already a regular Q Clothier customer, I was just extending the experience to an app on their phone.
I have learned a bit about UI and UX since I designed this app, but I still like it as an example of extending a brand that operates in a very well-branded physical space, and bringing it into the digital space. And it’s not every day that I get such a nice existing brand to work with. Gotham and Didot? That local shop knew what they were doing.