LabA
Test. Ship. Repeat.
- Client
- adidas
- Year
- 2019–2024
- Role
- Senior Director, Digital Innovation (lead / co-lead)
- Discipline
- Innovation / R&D
LabA was adidas’s cross-functional innovation lab, spanning digital and design. The goal was to experiment with new technologies and turn the ones that worked into digital product solutions for consumers. I led it as executive sponsor and lead for Digital Innovation from 2019 to 2024 (co-lead in the early years). It also fed adidas’s web3 and gaming studio.
Pilots to help shoppers buy with confidence online, including footwear Virtual Try-On, now scaled to most footwear models and lifting conversion 50% in the app, and a sizing pilot that cut wrong-size picks from 90% to 40%.
We explored AR through Snapchat shopping experiences. On an adidas tee, scanning a QR code opened a lens that animated the graphic, and the tees sold online. For Into the Metaverse products, a lens let people rotate a 3D hoodie and try on sneakers.
adidas had a strategic partnership with Les Mills, a leader in fitness programming. We brought adidas into virtual and XR fitness, starting with a product partnership: every trainer in Les Mills’ XR fitness app was outfitted head to toe in adidas apparel and footwear. We then explored the sports science and technical capabilities of XR fitness, including a long discovery with a leading VR headset maker. It didn’t result in an adidas XR app, and it was too early for the public.