Paul Friemel: Director, Ecommerce Strategist, Creator

RIPT Apparel

Crowdsourced Shirt-a-Day Online Retailer

Co-Founder
Chief Creative Officer
Chief Merchandising Officer
Design Director
Community Manager

RIPT Apparel started as a dream between 3 long-time friends. Nine years later the company has been featured as one of the country's 500 fastest growing companies by Inc. Magazine, reached annual revenues of over $4 million, and had up to 30 full-time staff members. With over 4000 freelance artists in their community, there have never been any quiet days in the creative department at RIPT Apparel.

Visit RIPT

E-commerce 24-hours at a time

Press

Inc. 500
Chicago Tribune
Crains
Shopify
You and Me This Morning (video)

RIPT started with a simple idea: 1 shirt for 24 hours 365 days per year.

As time passed and the landscape changed, new products needed to be created and marketed to our core customer base. It was my sole responsibility to generate new and exciting products while cultivating a vivid community of over 2500 artists from all over the world. With over 6000 daily products as well as 2000 additional unique offerings, I was able keep our insatiable customer base satisfied and coming back every day at midnight to see what we'd be offering next.

Expanding from a single design on five mens-sized tees each day, to three designs on over ten different products created new challenges no one could have predicted. Overseeing and developing processes for the creation of over 150 individual SKUs each day required meticulous planning along with flexibility for the unforeseen.

All the while, I was tasked with marketing each product to a unique audience each day. To solve this, I developed our own in-house flavor of Facebook advertising that is still in effect to this day with monthly budgets over $30,000.

Merchandising

Maintained company branding across entire product line.
Sourced custom products exclusive to the RIPT brand.
Managed innovative licensing solutions with artists.

Branding

Created the corporate identity, logo, and style-guide.
Developed company mascot.
Developed and directed team members on company social 'voice.'
Directed creation of visuals for marketing materials across all sales channels.

E-Mail Marketing

Created a process to segment 300,000 subscribers into over 500 segments.
Maintained Facebook integration of segmented lists for direct advert targeting and remarketing.
Focused on email automation saving hours a week.

Customer Service

Developed use of 3rd party systems to tame growing customer service challenges.
Oversaw creation of article-based customer service self-help desk reducing number of tickets over 40%.
Maintained consistent customer service ratings above 90% over multiple years.

E-commerce

Reached annual sales revenues of over $4.2M at a profit margin of over 30%.
Developed sales and pricing strategies to raise AOV 20%.
Managed Facebook advertising budgets of $30K to $50K per month with ROAS up to 10x.

Community Management

Maintained a social media forum of over 1500 ever-changing artists from all over the world.
Generated extensive ever-evolving FAQ documentation for artists of all skill levels.
Remained vigilant and responsive during difficult public moments such as negatively-received policy changes.

The Smashing Pumpkins

Grammy Award-winning Alternative Rock Band

Director of New Media • Webmaster • Fan Community Manager

In 2007, The Smashing Pumpkins returned to a world that was very different than when they departed in late 2000. In order to face this brave new technologically savvy world head-on, the band created a branded state-of-the-art community-driven website. I was the one chosen to take the helm of this massive endeavour and for 3 years every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears I had to give were poured into the code seen at Smashingpumpkins.com.
To my inifinite sadness, the site, as it existed from 2007-2010, has been removed from the web but portions of it can be seen using The Wayback Machine.

Press

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Victory Records

Independent Record Label

Art Director • Multimedia Specialist • Designer

Victory Records provided me the first major step in my career, and it was a doozy. The label was reaching new heights with breakthrough artists such as Taking Back Sunday, Atreyu, Hawthorne Heights, and A Day To Remember. With this success came a flood of design projects and I was hired to take on anything that came my way. Creating a video department from the ground up, helping to launch a new webstore, and creating artwork for a gold record top my fantastic time at Victory Records.

Other Projects

Other clients, freelance, and friends

Jimmy Chamberlain
Capitol Records
Columbia Records
The Pampered Chef
JBTV
TFsource

I occasionally take on projects outside of my full-time employment. These have taken many different forms from complete websites, merchandise designs, packaging, or general branding concepts.