Reinventing the digital flagship for the world’s original folding umbrella brand.

Background

Knirps is a German brand with a genuine claim to category invention: they created the world’s first folding umbrella in 1928, and the word “Knirps” became — in German — the generic term for a folding umbrella, much as Hoover did for vacuum cleaners in English. That heritage is a powerful asset but also a design challenge: it must be present without making the brand feel like a museum piece.

Their eCommerce store was failing to translate the brand’s premium positioning into a credible digital experience. Products that retailed at significantly higher prices than category competitors needed a platform that justified and reinforced that premium — with confident design, clear product communication, and a purchase experience that matched.

Our Approach

The redesign started with brand positioning as a foundation, not as decoration. Knirps’ engineering precision — materials, mechanisms, durability claims — became structural elements of the product page design, not footnotes. A technical detail that might appear as a bullet point in a standard template was given space, illustration, and hierarchy that made it an argument for the premium price.

The visual language was developed to feel confident and contemporary while honouring the brand’s German engineering heritage: clean, purposeful, with no superfluous ornamentation — but warm enough to work for a gift-purchase occasion, which is a significant driver in the umbrella category.

Deliverables

• Brand and audience analysis informing the design direction
• Full IA restructure across the catalogue, product detail, and purchase flow
• Complete UI design — homepage, category pages, PDP, cart, checkout, brand editorial pages
• Design system with components, tokens, and responsive specifications
• Production-ready Figma file with developer handoff documentation