02 Case Study
Launching New R&D
I was appointed Design Lead to establish Zalando's first Asian R&D center, building a localized innovation engine to capture market signals from Chinese e-commerce, under an aggressive timeline and strict data-compliance constraints.
The Challenge
A six-month timeline and a legal data deadlock
I was appointed to open Zalando's first Asian R&D center in Shenzhen. The goal was to learn directly from Asian e-commerce and experiment with which of its innovations could actually be adapted to the European context, not just observe them from a distance.
The challenge went beyond the difference in cultural perspectives between Chinese and European users. We also had to navigate GDPR protocols while building a local team from scratch and priming them for close collaboration with headquarters, all within six months.
Approach
Building the bridges for local expertise to thrive
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1
Market intelligence
Managed a partnership with IDEO Shanghai as our eyes and ears on the ground, co-designing SVP workshops that translated Asian market signals, like Live Commerce and Visual Search, into an EU-relevant roadmap.
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2
A sanitized data bridge
Partnered with Legal and Security to architect a mirrored, GDPR-compliant Figma environment and research protocol, transforming what was a hard legal blocker into the infrastructure for a high-velocity innovation engine.
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3
Localized talent & rituals
Redefined the hiring architecture to bridge EU/CN cultural gaps, retrained 8 interviewers on cultural awareness, and established a cross-functional "Support Squad" ritual to integrate the hub into HQ culture.
Working with IDEO
Combining market intelligence with strategic intent
IDEO Shanghai brought what we couldn't easily get from Berlin. Deep, on-the-ground knowledge of Chinese consumer behaviour, emerging patterns, and what was already working at scale. I brought the other half. Who the Zalando user is, where our roadmap was heading, and the strategic constraints we were working within. Together we ran a structured assessment of the bets on the table and developed proposals for leadership.
I then facilitated the sessions where our SVP team made the call on which experiments to pursue first, translating between market opportunity and organisational readiness.
Big Bet 01
From inspo to outfit
In China, leading apps have fewer pages. A hyper-personalized algorithm does the guessing, so they don't need to. To close that gap for Zalando, we needed to fundamentally rethink how we capture and interpret user preference signals.
We partnered with R&D engineering in Zurich and Shenzhen to assess different AI models, and ran live tests to understand which attributes of an image or product actually drive user attention. We designed a flow to extract style attributes from inspiration images and map them to shoppable outfits, not to ship it, but to learn where the models held up and where they broke down.
The new experimental features we designed didn't make the roadmap. But the learnings and assessment of what matters in AI generated content changed the way our R&D lab assessed and chose models to work with. Sometimes the feature doesn't need to launch for the impact to make its mark.
Big Bet 02
Interactive livestreaming
Live commerce was already mainstream in China, but what made it work wasn't just the format. It was how apps made it interactive, social, and sticky. Zalando already had a third-party livestream integration, but it was passive. We wanted to understand what it would take to build something genuinely engaging for a European audience.
I worked with our first design hire in Shenzhen to generate 20+ experiment concepts, drawing directly from what we'd observed in the Chinese market. With product and engineering, we rebuilt the livestream platform from scratch and launched the first three experiments, moving from concept to a shipped beta in just two months.
That speed paid off. The pilot reached 58k users, drove double the standard watch time on Zalando, and held a 16% week-over-week retention rate, strong enough signals to move livestreaming into the core product roadmap.
See it Live
Final Results
A blueprint for how Zalando expands into new territories
The Shenzhen hub became Zalando's first proof point for internationally-distributed R&D. The GDPR-compliant data framework we built became a blueprint for future cross-border design collaboration, and livestreaming went on to become a core part of the Zalando product.
2 mo
From concept to a shipped livestreaming beta
58k
Users reached by the livestreaming pilot
2×
Standard watch time on Zalando
16%
Week-over-week retention rate
2
Local design hires in Shenzhen
Learning
With international expansion, build the operational bridges that allow local expertise to thrive within global constraints.