Our digital innovation work with David’s Bridal started shortly after they acquired our longtime partner, Blueprint Registry. As one of the largest wedding dress retailers in the world, David’s had a two-year roadmap to hugely enhance its digital presence. Their team watched from the front row as we built and launched a website builder to integrate with Blueprint’s universal gift registry platform. That success prompted David’s to ask us to tackle the full suite of tools they envisioned — and would ultimately lead to Bilberrry building them a new ecomm solution. 

We approached David’s tools with a partner’s perspective. We knew David’s had a robust roadmap of digital tools and features; we also knew if we treated those pieces of a larger ecosystem, instead of individual one-off applications, we could deliver more value, much faster over the long term. 

So instead of diving straight into the design and build of the first tool on the roadmap, we invested a little over five months building out a design system and library of components in REACT. We think of it kind of like LEGOs: once all the pieces are made, we just have to stack them together in different configurations so they do whatever the next app is supposed to do. 

On the flip side, if we were building each app one by one, it would be like inventing new LEGO piece shapes from scratch, figuring out if they fit with pieces from other LEGO sets, getting them manufactured, and then stacking them together to do what they are supposed to do.

It was a big investment that got us big returns. Once we had the framework built, we could launch a new digital tool in as little as a month; in just over one year, we’d launched all of the tools on the initial roadmap. And we’re still going at pace, while continuously refining our process to make the design, build, QA, and delivery even better. We’ve even been able to leverage the framework in our work on David’s new ecomm platform for the store locator feature.

Here are some of the tools we’ve built.

A quick quiz helps brides-to-be create a shareable mood board for all areas of wedding planning, from floral arrangements to dress to design. There’s another version specifically for weddings in Mexico. Since we built the original vision board app to scale easily, we were able to quickly implement localization and stand up new infrastructure for Mexico extremely quickly. 

A customizable checklist designed to break down the seemingly endless planning to-do’s by month — with the ability to add collaborators and assign tasks. 

We overhauled the existing Dress Feature to incorporate fresh product data. The new six-part quiz helps shoppers narrow down Davids’ huge selection of dresses by shape, style, and feature. 

Another existing tool we rebuilt with a more modern tech stack and a mobile-friendlier design. Customers can schedule appointments to get personal styling advice online or in-store at any of David’s 300+ retail locations.

We helped David’s launch their new Diamond Loyalty Club by integrating with their program partner. Diamond Club members can create an account, accrue “diamonds,” and cash them out for gifts and other prizes in the club portal. 

Our technical recommendations are always driven by what’s best for our client’s business — what will be faster, cheaper, more efficient, longer lasting. But that’s what every agency says. How do you prove it, especially early on in a relationship, before you have any track record of success? 

It’s the question we faced when we pitched building a design framework. We were telling a new and important client that at six months, instead of celebrating a launch, we’d just be getting started on the first tool on their roadmap. It was a tough sell: design systems are technically complex, and it’s a strategy that only really pays off with time. We were not only asking David’s to invest in a new, more agile way of product management, but also to commit to a relationship with us. 

To be frank, if it wasn’t for our existing “in-house” partnership with Blueprint Registry and their technical leadership advocating for us, there’s a good chance David’s wouldn’t have accepted the perceived risk we presented. Integrating with their team as a true partner took a long time and a lot of finesse, but ultimately paid off for both sides: David’s has a full suite of digital tools, and Bilberrry was invited to tackle their new ecomm solution over the next two years.