The Faire Design team’s biggest launches of 2024

AI agents, scalable systems, heartwarming brand campaigns, and more—10 of the biggest projects we launched this year

2024 was a big year at Faire. We grew our team, launched several new key initiatives to better serve our customers, and created over 700,000 new relationships between brands and retailers through our Faire Markets. And when we sat down to review all of our work this year, 10 key projects stood out for the Faire Design team. From AI agents to heartwarming brand campaigns, here are some of the projects we’re most proud of that we launched in 2024.

AI innovations

In this first category, we have AI innovations — projects where we’ve tapped into the power of AI to help our customers more efficiently.

Our AI-recommended product descriptions and image edits help brands easily optimize their listings for the marketplace.

AI-recommended product descriptions and image edits

For brands, adding or editing descriptions for products and cropping images to upload to Faire can take hours. We developed a suite of AI models to improve brands’ product listings, allowing us to automatically create hundreds of thousands of high quality product descriptions in a very short period of time. We were also able to improve product images by either cropping them to fit our recommended dimensions, or swapping out the featured image for one better suited to represent the product — this makes the marketplace look more cohesive, enabling retailers to compare products for their stores more easily.

“Personally, I was excited by the sheer quantity of images, descriptions, and text we were able to improve, all without brands having to do any work. This not only saves brands time, it also helps optimize their listings for the marketplace which tangibly improves the experience of retailers and increases sales overall,” shared Staff Product Designer Brooklyn Brown.

Additional design credits: Angela Tang for thought partnership and discussing all the design details, and Nick Howland for taking over the next phase of this work and providing feedback along the way.

Our new AI-powered virtual assistant helps customers get the answers they’re looking for — and helps them connect to a human when needed.

Customer support virtual assistant

Earlier this year, we launched an AI-powered virtual assistant to help customers resolve support issues. This faster, more flexible approach replaces a step-by-step flow which required customers to select from pre-set options. By letting customers describe issues in their own words, they can express issues quickly and get smart suggested solutions for speedy issue resolution.

The assistant’s responses draw from Faire’s Help Center articles and synthesize relevant information to share with customers. For common issues, the assistant can look up order or customer information to answer questions dynamically. The assistant can also connect customers to human agents when more help is needed. With the virtual assistant taking on the bulk of straightforward questions that can be answered immediately, it frees up human support agents to focus on more complex issues and high-touch service.

“Our support experience is something customers love about Faire. I’m proud of how we listened to customers and advocated for them in creating the virtual assistant. Knowing customers often feel blocked by chatbots, we made it easy to reach a person when needed. Our goal is to keep the feeling we’re always here to help, while using the assistant to answer many questions right away,” explained Staff Product Designer Jess Brown.

Additional design credits: Ryan Lee for thought partnership and the regular discussions of specifics. Amy Talus, Abby Mills, and Kristin Yeh for collaboration to define the chatbot’s brand identity. And Discovery designers Chris Chappelle, Ben Tremper, and Amy Jin for discussions about other AI experiences in exploratory phases.

Workflow improvements

In this category, we have workflow improvements. These updates have a big impact on our customers’ productivity — enabling them to run their businesses more seamlessly.

The new mobile order writing feature on the Faire app for brands helps brands accept orders in person, especially useful at trade shows.

Mobile order writing

A natural evolution of the Faire app for brands, launched in 2023, was introducing mobile order writing. This new feature gives brands the ability to write orders for their new and existing customers using their phone or tablet, giving them the flexibility to close more sales in person and bridging the gap between selling on Faire versus selling in person at trade shows.

“This project kicked off with me newly joining to support this team for design. We were able to come together quickly, solve tough problems, and build in a fun and collaborative way. My favorite part was working with so many cross-functional partners. From our mobile engineers and product manager who built the app from the ground up, to our product marketing team who helped build awareness and adoption, everyone cared deeply about our brands’ experience with the app and acted like an owner,” shared Staff Product Designer Lan Lam.

Faire’s new POS integrations help save retailers time when managing their inventory.

POS integrations and adoption

Retailers rely on our point-of-sale (POS) integrations to create product listings in their desired POS system. Through many in-person and virtual customer interviews, we recognized that our previous POS integration wasn’t’ flexible enough to meet retailers’ needs. We launched a year-long project to rebuild our integrations for Shopify, Square, and Clover from scratch to better suit retailer workflows. Our new integration enables retailers to easily transfer and edit more details into their system, including product names, descriptions, prices, tags, categories and more. Retailers can also view their inventory while shopping on Faire, which makes it easier to reorder products.

“It’s one of those projects that touches on things we don’t often think about when designing digital experiences,” shared Staff Product Designer Jasmine Shen. “We’re often focused on things that happen on Faire — like discovering new products, or checking out — and the POS integration project addresses the pain points of what happens after retailers order on Faire. It was incredibly rewarding to hear from retailers, often unprompted, about how much time the new integrations have saved them. It feels really meaningful to give people back their time.”

Additional design credit: Helen Han

Scalable systems

Next, we have our scalable systems category. Each of these projects required a thoughtful approach to develop a system that can scale with our customers.

Our new global navigation design makes it easier for retailers to focus on the shopping categories that are relevant to their business.

Global navigation redesign

Previously, the global navigation at the top of any Faire page offered an overwhelming amount of information. With such a broad marketplace, a pet store owner might find themselves looking at categories that weren’t at all relevant to them — like Beauty & Wellness or Food & Drink. To fix this, we redesigned the navigation so that it’s personalized to the retailer — showing only a subset of categories based on where the store is buying, globally important discovery surfaces, and seasonal hubs. The remaining information now lives in a categories menu that retailers can access as needed, reducing visual clutter and streamlining the experience.

“One of the things that I enjoyed about this project was that it was design-lead. We had the space to explore a wide range of options and prototype the system in order to build confidence that we would land on a good solution for our customers. I enjoyed having this extra room to think holistically and explore creative directions,” explained Staff Product Designer Chris Chappelle.

Additional design credits: Tim Hoover, Jess Karle, and Cristi Wallace

Our new brand page redesign puts the spotlight on brands and makes it easier for retailers to find what they’re looking for.

Brand page navigation redesign

The brand page is one of the most important surface areas on Faire for brands because it’s where their catalog lives within the marketplace. Because of the wide range of different kinds of brands on Faire, it has been challenging to design a brand page navigation system that fits everything from a small retailer with a handful of products to a large brand that offers thousands of different SKUs.

We recently redesigned the brand page navigation with two goals in mind: first to help get retailers to view products sooner, and second to offer quick options to navigate to relevant products no matter how far down the page a retailer has scrolled. The new, scalable design now moves key navigational elements — like subcategories for bestsellers, collections, and new arrivals — to a horizontal format that locks in at the top of the page; the search bar is now accessible from anywhere in the page; and historic elements like filters and category navigation remain in the left navigation.

“One of our visions was to use this new navigation to make the brand page feel like a mini website for the brand. We wanted to ensure that as soon as a retailer lands on that page, they can immediately get a sense of the brand and their products — without having to scroll down. What’s exciting about this work is seeing how other teams are able to plug into this new structure to continue adding value to the brand pages,” shared Lead Product Designer Sophie O’Neill-Latulippe.

Our new P0 notification makes it clear which actions are checkout-blocking.

In-product notifications

As Faire has grown more complex, the team recognized in 2024 that our retailers were getting bombarded with more information than they could reasonably take in when they first signed up for Faire (through banners, modals, and more). To address this, we developed a set of principles to streamline our in-product messaging and “right-size” the volume based on the retailer and what they most needed to know.

After auditing over 100 different sitewide banners, we whittled them down to a list of 26 that were important to keep — the rest got cleaned up out of our system. Additionally, as part of our new structured notification system, we introduced two content types: a “general” notification and a more urgent “P0” notification, using a new “serrano” red color for actions that are checkout-blocking. This banner follows a user around until the action is taken.

“One of the coolest things about this project was that it was very design-led. It can be hard to quantify from a product perspective the value of simplification and creating more focus for a customer to streamline their experience. It feels intuitive, but it can be hard to map to core business metrics. We worked really hard to show the pain of our cluttered experience and get buy-in across teams to carve out space to make our retailers’ early days on Faire less overwhelming. It’s really exciting to have this be part of the Faire system now, and to be able to start to test our principles around what should be a notification and what gets cut. Are there new content types we’ll want to introduce? Will we want to expand or collapse some of our current principles?” Senior Staff Content Designer Amy Talus explained.

Spotlighting our customers

Last but not least, is our work spotlighting our incredible customers. At Faire, we’re constantly inspired by our brands and retailers, and we love getting to share with everyone else how great they are.

Our logged out homepage reflects the Faire brand and entices retailers.

Logged out homepage redesign

The logged-out homepage is Faire’s front door — it’s where retailers, brands, candidates, partners, family, and friends come to learn about our company. Earlier this year, we recognized that as our brand evolved, this key landing page no longer captured who we had become. To better engage new retailers and accurately reflect Faire’s identity, we redesigned the homepage to spotlight real Faire retailers, showcase a rotating selection of product categories, and create a more authentic, welcoming introduction to who we are.

“The new Faire homepage is a representation of who we are as a company. The redesign was a huge step forward in bringing more humanity and vibrancy to the page, better reflecting our customer base and values,” explained Lead Product Designer Cristi Wallace.

Additional design credits: Adam Schwabe, Amy Talus, and Sophia Arriola-Gibson

Our Stand Against Bland campaign highlighted inspiring retailers from around the world.

Stand Against Bland

With our campaign Stand Against Bland, we brought our mission to life by celebrating the retailers and brands that strengthen the character of local communities. The creative highlighted the uniqueness and individuality of our marketplace while honoring the people behind the businesses who make their towns and cities vibrant.

At the heart of the campaign were bespoke rallying cries crafted for six featured customers. Each one distilled the spirit of their businesses and the communities they shape, serving as a powerful reminder of how small businesses bring personality and connection to our neighborhoods.

The campaign spanned social, digital, YouTube, trade shows, and out-of-home placements, reaching a broad audience across North America and Europe and marking our largest brand campaign to date.

“My favorite part of the project was getting to know our customers and seeing firsthand the impact their shops and studios have on their communities. Each story was a powerful reminder of how these businesses bring life, identity, and connection to their neighborhoods,” shared Creative Lead Jessica Hägg.

Partner: Anyways Creative

Additional design credits: Flora Marchi, Chris Lopez, Sophia Arriola-Gibson, *Ximena Keirouz, and Esmé Wright*

[embed]A new episode in the Small World series features the owners of Cabi and Winnie Superette meeting for the first time.

Small World

Faire is a global marketplace that connects brands and retailers around the world — while most of those relationships are virtual, we thought it would be fun to give them the chance to meet in real life. With our Small World campaign, we found a brand and a retailer who do business with each other located halfway around the world from one another, and invited them to meet one another in person. This video series showcases Faire’s role in building and strengthening these relationships, and how we’re committed to helping unique brands and retailers grow together all around the world. We’ve since produced several other heartwarming episodes beyond the pilot episode, to be released soon.

“What makes these videos so powerful is that the stories and relationships in them are authentic. They’re not manufactured. Our customers are such inspiring people — it makes my job easy to tell their stories,” shared Lead Brand Designer Patrick Moriarty.

Additional design credits: Ximena Keirouz and Esmé Wright

That’s a wrap on this year! Interested in joining us and working on our new favorite projects next year — and beyond? Apply for open roles.