Rain Gear Pro × Headwinds

Build Log.

A running record of the Apex product-page rebuild: what changed, when, and why. Built to the Rain Gear Pro design system.

1. 6 July 2026 · Catalog-wide rollout + polish

   Master PDP across the whole catalog

   Live · draft

   All 25 sellable products now run the one branded template (saw pants, chaps, Hurricane jackets, bibs and accessories), each with feature cards, spec tables, FAQs and buy-box bullets written from that product's own verified spec sheet.

   Cross-sell wired in

   AOV

   Pants and bibs now recommend a matching jacket and vice-versa, aimed at the ~52% of orders that are bottoms-only. Product cards also carry a one-line "what makes this different" so similar items are easy to tell apart.

   Homepage & collection polish

   Live · draft

   Category tiles and section imagery swapped to clean shots (no baked-in text), card spacing tidied to brand, and the waterproof stat corrected to "40,000mm · Apex" (it's the flagship rating, not brand-wide).

   Comparison chart · in progress

   Next

   Building the "what's the difference between these?" comparison across the rain jackets and the saw-pant tiers: the answer customers ask for most.

2. 2–3 July 2026 · Homepage rebuilt + sitewide quick wins

   Homepage rebuilt end-to-end

   Live · draft

   Full conversion story on the brand system: saw-pants-led hero, proof strip, Shop-by-Job, best sellers, saw-pants education, kits, Made-in-Canada origin, workshop video, verified social proof, 30-day trial, FAQ and email capture. Eleven dated sections removed.

   Speed: static hero

   Live · draft

   The rotating slideshow (2.2MB first image) is gone: one fast documentary hero with a clear headline and two calls-to-action. The broken Safety Chaps tile is fixed.

   One truth for shipping & heritage

   Trust

   Free shipping now reads $400+ everywhere, matching what checkout actually charges (three different numbers were live before). Heritage locked to Est. 1988 / 38 years across 13 templates; unverified certification claims taken down until documentation arrives.

   Buy box + cart drawer tuned

   Live · draft

   Price rides on the red Add-to-Cart, size selector in the sticky bar (desktop and mobile), "Buy it with" pairs the jacket with bibs: the pairing customers already choose most. Cart drawer badge corrected to verified numbers.

   Catalog paths

   IA

   New curated collections (Rain Jackets, Rain Pants & Bibs, Accessories, Kits & Bundles), so every product finally has a shelf. Menu update speced for review.

3. 30 June 2026 · Apex PDP rebuilt from scratch

   Adversarial audit & hardening (2 July)

   Live · draft

   A 24-agent audit re-verified every claim on the page against the factory spec sheet and the store itself. Fixes shipped: two fabric-spec wording errors, a screenshot-verified featured review, fit guidance added, price fail-safes for every currency, accessibility labels, and page styles scoped so nothing bleeds onto other products.

   Rebuilt as one composed page

   Live · draft

   Re-architected top to bottom. The product and Add to Cart now lead the page; a deliberate story follows: proof, build, fit, origin, and social proof. No more legacy theme sections wearing new paint.

   Purpose-built sections

   Design

   New on-brand sections: a proof strip, an annotated “The Build” anatomy (with the 10,000 + 30,000 = 40,000mm layer math), full-bleed documentary bands, an “Est. 1988” maker’s-mark origin panel, and a reframed founder-video band.

   Buy box · conversion pass

   Live · draft

   Fixed the hierarchy (product name and price scaled right), tool-grade size selector, a bold red Add to Cart, a risk-reversal trust ribbon, verified benefit bullets, and a real featured review.

   Copy: brand voice + fact-check

   Voice

   Every claim rewritten to the foreperson voice and checked against the verified spec sheet. Origin framing settled as a deliberate hybrid: “Pacific Northwest” for the regional read, “Made in Canada” for specific origin claims. Removed marketing filler and fixed a “liner” wording error: the Apex is an unlined two-layer shell.

   Sizing · XXL added

   Live · draft

   XXL measurements added from the factory sheet; every size chart has an inches ↔ cm toggle and fit guidance.

   Accessibility & cleanup

   Housekeeping

   Alt text added to every product image. Removed 11 redundant or dead sections (including a duplicated reviews widget and a repeated heritage block), leaving a lean 13-section template.

   Origin framing · Pacific Northwest × Made in Canada

   Voice

   A deliberate hybrid: “Pacific Northwest” for the regional, US-audience resonance; “Made in Canada” for the specific-origin and tariff-free credibility.

   Buy box · final polish

   Live · draft

   Product identity leads (name + spec line first, rating tucked beneath), room to clear the sticky header, and the price now rides on the red Add to Cart button (dynamic per size and currency), so the buy box is tighter.

4. 26–29 June 2026 · Brand system & PDP engine

   Draft theme on the RGP design system

   Brand

   Warm Stone canvas, Ink, Brand Red used sparingly, and the Oswald / Barlow / IBM Plex Mono type system applied across the theme: header, buttons, badges and text. One stylesheet drives the PDP, so brand re-tunes happen in one place.

   Metaobject-driven PDP engine

   PDP

   Size & fit, features, specifications and FAQ driven by structured product data, styled on-brand, and built to scale across the catalogue.

   Sticky add-to-cart

   Live · draft

   The buy action follows the customer down the page.

5. 19–25 June 2026 · Foundation

   Shopify access established

   Foundation

   Custom app with full read/write: products, metafields, themes and metaobjects.

   Conversion & growth brief

   Foundation

   The plan we’re executing against: conversion-first, grounded in the store data and year-one targets.

   PDP data schema

   PDP

   Metaobject definitions for sizing, specifications, features and FAQ: the structured foundation the page is built on.