Vision meets execution
I connect creative vision with commercial strategy to build products consumers choose, brands people trust, and businesses that grow.
Consumer Product Executive
Design Leader / Brand Strategist
A career alongside the world’s most recognized brands
Great products begin with understanding people. Great businesses turn that understanding into something the market values.
My work lives at that intersection—connecting consumer insight, design, merchandising, and commercialization to move a business forward.
Seasonal revenue across six divisions
of Walmart’s Athletic Works business
Tek Gear sales within the target consumer
in just six weeks at Kohl’s
Sales through national retail partnerships
with Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods
From global retail scale to building a brand from the first idea. Different challenges. One connected perspective.
Led the Athletic Works business across six divisions, generating more than $750 million in seasonal revenue.
The scale of a national retailer. The focus of a consumer brand. This leadership role brought product direction and design to an athletic business spanning multiple divisions.
Product strategy · Design leadership · RetailIncreased Tek Gear sales within the target consumer from 2% to 22% in six weeks through insight, product strategy, and design leadership.
Understanding the target consumer informed the product and design direction. The result shows how closely consumer insight and commercial performance can connect.
Consumer insight · Product strategy · DesignPartnered with Venus Williams to build EleVen from concept through commercialization.
A partnership that connected the initial brand idea to the work of bringing a consumer product business to market—across design, product development, and commercialization.
Brand development · Product creation · CommercializationSelected to represent the U.S. on design teams in France and Germany, helping pioneer the Trefoil collection that became the incubator for adidas Originals.
Bringing an American perspective to international design teams meant working across markets and cultures. The Trefoil work became part of an enduring design story.
International design · Brand heritage · Consumer culture03 / How I create value
A connected view of the entire product lifecycle. The right questions at the beginning. The right decisions all the way to market.
Discuss an opportunityFind the unmet need, understand the consumer, and identify the space your business has permission to own.
Consumer opportunity · White space · Product strategyTranslate a strategic direction into meaningful products. Align creative teams around the consumer, the brand, and the business opportunity.
Design direction · Product development · Team leadershipConnect what a brand stands for with what it brings to market, shaping assortments and a product story that make sense to the consumer.
Brand development · Assortment strategy · Retail positioningBring the pieces together—from sourcing and retail execution to partnerships—to turn product potential into a business that grows.
Sourcing · Retail execution · Partnerships · Brand growthBARBARA CLARKE-RUIZ New York City Metropolitan Area
04 / Meet Barbara
I’ve built my career between the creative studio and the business decision.
For more than two decades, I’ve helped global brands uncover consumer opportunities and bring commercially successful products to market. My experience connects apparel design, product strategy, merchandising, brand development, and commercialization.
I’m also a founder. Through BCSWIRL and my own consumer brand, Lick You Silly Pet Products, I’ve brought the same thinking to building businesses from the ground up.
Lick You Silly was recognized as a Top 2% Amazon seller and named Best Dog Treat by Cosmopolitan.
Leadership, consumer product strategy, and the power of sport and culture. Each platform brings a different lens to growth.
My work, philosophy, and selected career highlights at the intersection of design, strategy, and business.
Explore my work
Strategic product development, brand building, merchandising, marketing, and commercialization for consumer brands.
Explore BCSWIRL
Helping brands connect authentically through sport, culture, partnerships, licensing, and consumer communities.
Explore Sport Culture Advisors06 / Let’s build what’s next
I welcome executive leadership opportunities, select strategic consulting relationships, and paid collaborations.
Start a conversation bcswirl@gmail.com