case study — cinched
Making fashion more personal, social, and effortless.
team
1 Product Designer
2 Software Engineers
role
Product Designer
timeline
Apr. 2025 - Sept. 2025
skills
Wireframing
Mobile Design
Prototyping
tools
Figma
01 / overview
A closet that feels like yours
Cinched is a vintage resale and style platform that rejects the “trend cycle.” Build digital closets, create outfits, and share your aesthetic.
As the sole product designer, I led Cinched from ambiguous concept to a functional MVP: UX strategy, information architecture, visual identity, and a scalable design system for web and mobile.
02 / the insight
Why we built this
People didn’t need a store. They needed a tool.
Outfit fatigue
Full closets, nothing to wear.
87%
want to style before they buy.
No tool to style
People can’t visualize combinations, and algorithms keep telling them what to buy.
Business goal: retention
Resale apps suffer “buy and bye.” A daily utility gives people a reason to come back.
03 / assumptions and hypothesis
Where the hypothesis came from
We started with a founder’s belief: people don’t just buy and sell clothes, they express identity through style.
Fifteen interviews and a direct Depop and Poshmark audit tested that belief before we committed to build. The 87% stat and the closet quote turned intuition into direction.
04 / research
How Depop and Poshmark compare
15 interviews with vintage enthusiasts, plus a direct audit of Depop and Poshmark.
Both have strong discovery and social features, but both are built around transactions. Depop’s new Outfits tool styles shoppable collages; Poshmark’s “closet” is a seller’s inventory.
Neither gives people a private space to catalog and combine what they already own. Cinched’s digital closet has the opposite goal: buying less by making your wardrobe usable again.
“I spend hours scrolling Depop, but I still have nothing to wear. I forget what’s even in my own closet.”
— Participant 3
Where They Fall Short
Commerce-first mindset limits creative expression
All platforms optimize for transactions. Social features feel secondary, tacked-on.
Can’t combine multiple items digitally
Item overload
Apps focus on individual listings rather than helping users see how pieces work together.
05 / design and iteration
Wireframing, prototyping, usability testing
I tested drag-and-drop, swipe-to-add, and template-based builders. Drag-and-drop won on playfulness and flexibility.
The call came from early build reviews, not an A/B test. With two engineers and no live users, waiting for statistical proof meant not shipping, so I chose to validate after launch.
What we tried and left behind
Swipe-to-add
Fast, but users couldn’t see multiple pieces at once, which mattered more than speed.
Template-based
The fastest build path, but it worked against the premise: personal style, not a formula. Cut first.
I also tested stacked cards for closet item selection, to see how tactile the experience could feel.
06 / the solution
Five core features that celebrate personal style
I designed Cinched around the idea that your closet should feel like a playground—a space to experiment, create, and share without pressure or judgment.
01
Style Onboarding
Pick up to three styles for fast personalization. Presets are quick, but they cap expression.
02
Outfit Builder
Drag and drop pieces you already own. Built to feel like play, but chosen on instinct and not yet validated with users.
03
Digital Closet
Catalog and mix-and-match what you own, a reason to open Cinched without buying. Hardest to instrument, with no usage data yet.
04
Outfit Playground
Algorithm-free style inspiration from other users. A bet on authenticity over engagement, and one we haven’t measured.
05
Wishlist
Swipe right to save pieces. A familiar pattern borrowed for speed, and the least differentiated feature.
07 / final results + reflections
In-person Pop-up Metrics
Cinched shipped as an MVP with the outfit builder, digital closet, and wishlist. Our first in-person pop-up in Austin, TX was the real-money test: $127.65 across 9 sales in 3.5 hours, 80% through Apple Pay, and zero sales lost to friction, including one buyer who waited out a checkout hiccup.
Card buyers spent roughly 2x more per order than cash buyers ($17.11 vs. $8.33). That demand moved seller storefronts to our next build priority.
The pop-up proves the transactional side. Closet engagement is still unmeasured, since we hadn’t instrumented usage tracking. Analytics for return visits and outfits created is the next infrastructure priority.
$127.65
TOTAL REVENUE
80%
VIA APPLE PAY
2x
CASH V CARD SPEND
9
TOTAL SALES
08 / the setback
Shipping without a way to prove the core bet
The biggest failure was sequencing, not design. With two engineers and a hard MVP deadline, analytics kept losing to core flows.
Cinched launched with proof that the transactional side works, but no way to know if the digital closet changes behavior: no return-visit rate, no outfit counts. I treated instrumentation as an add-on instead of scoping it into the MVP for the feature we were betting on.
09 / looking back
What I’d do differently
01
Ship instrumentation with the bet
Usage tracking belonged in the first sprint. It’s the only way to test the core hypothesis.
02
Get a direct line to users
Remote and solo, my feedback came secondhand through engineering. I’d set up a lightweight direct channel from day one.
03
Validate the outfit builder first
Even a scrappy test with 5 to 10 of our 15 interviewees would have beaten deciding on team feel alone.
04
Pull seller storefronts earlier
The pop-up showed transactional demand earlier than the roadmap assumed. I’d re-sequence around evidence.
10 / reflection
Reflection & Lessons Learned
I prioritized the styling side, treating buying and selling as infrastructure. The Austin pop-up changed my mind: watching $127.65 change hands made it clear real commerce was happening whether or not I’d designed for it.
User research tells you what people want to do. Watching real money move tells you what they’re already doing, and the second can override the first.