SALVAGED
Thrifting can transform strangers into priceless exchanges between new friends. I founded Salvaged to streamline online resale through an enteprise-based model. This project shows how we redesigned the Salvaged e-commerce page over 1.5 years of live iterations, from a Shopify templated featuring clothing photographed in a university dormitory.
Problem
The original site experience needed to evolve as we discovered our target market. Here are the key problems with the core experience:
New North Star
How may we personalize quality product discovery?
Impact
After shipping the redesign, we were able to
+87% people who landed on the app
+32% people who clicked on a product
+48% conversion in 'for you' section
+24% saved in time till purchase
+32% increase in AOV
+67% unreturned orders
Enhanced site branding helped grow engagement 1.6x through invitations to keynote events like Shenzhen Fashion Week, and BOF Asia
Early mockups of the new website were pitched at Sino 1 Million, which we finalized to secure 175K HKD in initial funding
Design-led structure enabled us to experiment, fail and grow much faster - exploring 10+ different sources of preloved clothing, ~33% of which personally approached us via word of mouth or marketing.
First-principles
On Day 1, our goal was to build a site
On Day 2, we sent online surveys to understand why users may thrift on our site in the first place
On day 3, we met with participants from the survey willing to user-test our site in person
On month 3, we interviewed 20 different thrifters at our warehouse studio, observing the way they looked through racks versus interacting with our site to help make the switch from online to in-person seamless
The Variety of customers
Purchasing behaviors were polarizing between thrifters and non-thrifters. In traditional retail, products are intentionally optimized for user preferences, offered in multiple sizes and colourways and marketed in season. With thrift, the experience is determined by the user’s ability to create their own narratives - something newer thrifters struggled with and more experienced thrifters thrived off of.
By observing our users in-person, we were able to form an empathy map of pain points
If the experience is rife with this much anxiety, how does that amplify when thrifting online? And how may we soften the blow?
Curating like an archeologist
Every thrifter we spoke to were willing to look over pain points for the opportunity to find a ‘gem’. Thrifting does not compete with fast fashion on speed - the name says it all - but by offering the experience of discovery. A gem is filtered out from the rough weathering of space and time, chosen and preserved by invisible hands of thrift stores and owners. Old competes with new by offering an irreplaceable quality.
If 100 million clothes are made every year, how are we keeping track of the styles worth saving? And how much of our collective creativity is falling through the cracks? The opportunity lied in curating like an archeologist, where the perfect thrift experience is how well we can streamline archival in the form of quality discovery.
Quality became the north star, where we weren’t defined by resale value, but what people would genuinely wear a second time around.
A thrifted item is competing with every item of its kind ever made by any brand across time. Lack of guidance and differentiation leads to unconverted sales. In this case, how we communicate and deliver quality - from the curation selection process, to the way we present product information and pricing - helps anchor the limitless potential for thrift, to guide the user towards a satisfactory purchase.
Design Principles
Starting at the Product Level
A new acceptance criteria was mapped out, to consider the complex considerations most thrifters regard as ‘quality’ - this trickled into pricing and product descriptions. Accepted items were dynamically sorted into or sparked the creation of collections. This streamlined operational and marketing cost by grouping items.
Final Designs
In a world that encourages disposal, Salvaged empowers you to rehome clothing responsibly, a platform to engage in a real-time archive of new-to-you clothing in your preferred size, color, category and season
Passive User Flow - Boosting Discovery
Assisting users in finding desired product areas with minimal clicks
Active User Flow - Salvaging Conversions
Empower users with specific product requests to have full control and access to product information at the product feed level
If despite the above, the user still has uncertainties about the product, they can directly schedule an appointment with us, where the specified item will be prepared in advance. This enabled high-traction products to act as a leverage point to meet users in person, better understanding purchasing patterns in-person and online organically
Uplifting brand and transparency
Development
Phased Migration
After the design and features were confirmed, the hardest challenge still lay ahead. I had to manage migrating to the new site while ensuring a seamless experience for live users, avoiding disruptions during the transition. This was a particularly hard challenge as the product data changes (images, tags, metafields) affected all site versions, including the live site.
Metafields for Search & Discovery
Added fields (e.g., color, category) for better filtering.
Bulk Editing
Used Shopify bulk editor to populate metafields.
CSV Updates
Edited product info in CSV for bulk changes.
Draft & Publish Workflow
Created a draft version of the new site for testing. Published draft after first product data phase, then made further adjustments in a second phase.
Launch
Published new site after all updates.
Post-Launch Refinements
Updated CSV and images incrementally (landing page → older collections).
The opportunity to run Salvaged was a gift. These are some of my countless learnings I wish I could properly articulate:
The power of design leadership
Conducting good user research. considering different design features and constraints enabled us to develop a functional site sooner and helped with operational efficiencies, for example designing our inventory management system. I would often lead the team though white boarding exercises to get people creative, excited and feeling strong ownership of their responsibilities.
With that said
Design can only get you so far
You also need a reliable product and operational efficiency. Perhaps, there was a way to have outsourced these logistical challenges, to focus on personalizing the site experience. However, simply securing the clothing and getting it uploaded in the first place was the primary business goal. And curating a smaller collection would have led to difficulties in meeting the user’s expectation of variety.
Designing is also saying no, not just building more
As a first-time founder, this journey honestly left me jaded, and made me grow as a designer and strategist to emphasize prioritizing under constraints. I stopped working on the project after I shut down Salvaged to pursue product design full-time when unresolvable operational inefficiencies became apparent. I still believe in the power of online user experiences in making circular products mainstream.
