Role: Creative Director / UX Designer (end-to-end, solo) Scope: Brand strategy, UX/UI, art direction, video direction
The Problem
ForceUSA invented the all-in-one home gym. They built the category. But their website didn't act like it.
The old site read like every other equipment retailer online: product grids, spec sheets, an "add to cart" button. No story. No sense that this was the brand everyone else was copying. Meanwhile, a wave of cheaper competitors was flooding the market, banking on the fact that most shoppers couldn't tell the difference between an innovator and an imitator from a browser tab.
The business problem was simple: if the site couldn't communicate why ForceUSA was the original and the best, price would win. And ForceUSA doesn't compete on price.
The Process
I started with the client, not the screen. Sat down with the executive team to dig into the real brand story: how the company started, what made their engineering different, why "invented the category" wasn't just a tagline.
From there:
Market research to see how competitors were positioning (and where they were all saying the same generic thing).
User research to understand what serious home-gym buyers actually needed to trust before they'd spend real money on equipment.
Sitemap and IA rework to restructure how people found and evaluated products.
Wireframes to solve the UX problems before anyone touched visual design.
I presented research, strategy, sitemap, and wireframes directly to the executive team at each stage, so the brand narrative wasn't something I invented in a vacuum. It was something we built together and they could defend internally.
The Solution
I developed a new visual brand system from the ground up, built to feel like the company that sets the standard, not the one chasing it. That system extended past the website:
Art directed all new product photography.
Acted as creative director on video content for social channels and the site itself.
Designed the full site in Figma, coordinating directly with the CTO and lead developer to make sure the build matched the intent, not just the comps.
The goal wasn't a prettier website. It was a site that made ForceUSA's authority obvious in the first five seconds, so buyers stopped comparing them to knockoffs.
The Outcome
The rebuilt site gave ForceUSA a brand presence that finally matched their position in the market: the company that started the category, not just another name in it. It became the foundation for their photography, video, and social content going forward, not just a one-off web project.
