Up & Up

up&up repositioning

Translating repositioning into a scalable product system

Compare-to had reached its limit.
up&up needed its own reason to win.

With $340M in Beauty & Personal Care sales, the opportunity was not to prove the brand belonged. It was to give it a clearer identity for continued growth. By tying product credibility to direct national brand comparison, the brand was limited in its ability to evolve into new categories or compete in a more design-conscious personal care market.

At the same time, expectations in personal care were changing. Guests still wanted performance and value, but they also responded to products that felt more thoughtful, modern, and emotionally resonant in everyday use.

The opportunity was to reposition the brand around the best qualities across leading products, then translate that shift into a clearer design system for Beauty & Personal Care.

My role

I led the translation of the broader corporate repositioning strategy into a scalable design and product framework for Beauty and Personal Care.

This included:

Product Design
Claims architecture
Tone of voice
Fragrance direction
Consumer education

My approach

While a dedicated packaging team developed the packaging system, my focus was the broader product experience and how the repositioning showed up across Beauty & Personal Care.

I developed a design style guide that defined principles for:

Form language
Materials and finishes
Color strategy
Product aesthetics
Fragrance direction

To help teams balance functional credibility with emotional appeal, I introduced a simple decision filter:

Benefit leads. Experience follows.

This ensured up&up maintained its core promise—trusted performance and value—while introducing more thoughtful sensory and emotional elements into everyday care products.

This strategy became a scalable design system for up&up.

The Opportunity

Reposition a $340M Beauty and Personal Care business constrained by “compare-to” private label positioning into a brand capable of competing with the most loved products in everyday self-care.

The Design Translation

Create new SKUs and evolve existing ones by benchmarking the best attributes across the category, while maintaining Target’s value advantage.

The Result

Unlocked expansion into entirely new categories, including hair accessories, capturing shelf space from leaders like Goody and Scunci while delivering stronger margins and sustained growth.