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Footwear design head and team manager
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Jun 2014 - Present (10 years 3 months)
Built the footwear design department from scratch to a team of three designers.
Create and consolidate a design language that resonates with the brand’s foundation and values.
Lead the footwear design, coach and manage two designers making sure they are motivated, progress, and deliver their best work, and conduct yearly employee evaluations.
Proactively use my network and online design plateforms to acquire talents.
Develop and track the design schedule to ensure timely completion of designs and design packages according to the development calendar.
Organize workload and assign projects to team members, and when necessary to external designers.
Responsible for the design from A to Z, from mood boards to final samples through concepts, techpacks, colorways, materials selection, samples and blue print debriefs.
Collaborate closely with product management on the footwear range to identify business opportunities and to make propositions with trend/market/inspiration boards, sketches, renderings...
Ensure that every concept is in line with the brand’s DNA, and reaches business objectives in terms of margin and quantities.
Initiated and animated an innovation workshop, with the footwear team and an external design studio.
Initiated the creation of a new innovative targetted water protection concept for performance shoes and developped the concept through the categories.
initiated, in collaboration with a developer, an extended version of the innovative waterprotection concept, and convinced the footwear department to develop three new models to add to the range.
Collaborate with product managers to create story telling and translate these into styles that spread across the company.
Created a kid shoe concept story that was a product highlight and preselected for an award at Outdoor Retailer fair 2017, got a ISPO award in 2018.
Merged performance and lifestyle on the training shoe that led to the creation of a new category, highlighted at the 2017 ISPO fair in Munich.
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Design entrepreneur
Christophe Juge Design
Feb 2014 - Present (10 years 7 months)
After a significant and quite varied experience, I wanted to start my own design studio.
Registerd my company and ran my own business.
Established contacts and met potential customers.
Established a standard design process (phases and content), to use for costing and planning.
Realized costings, contract, and invoicing.
Audited client’s needs, objectives, targets FOB and quantities, schedule...
Designed a defence and police forces training shoe for an Estonian company, from concept sketches to final techpack for the development of samples in China. The shoes were introduced on the market in 2015.
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Category Lead Designer Winter Footwear at Quechua (Oxylane group)
Quechua (Decathlon)
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France
2013 - Mar 2014 (6 months)
As lead designer, I adapted the new brand’s design language to footwear and created a strong design identity and clear functional range from entry price to premium.
As category lead designer, presented the design directions before the season kick off.
Participate in the definition of the 10 years vision and road map for the footwear department.
Hired and managed an external design studio on some projects.
created a technical design language and system for the outsole grip, that is still in use years after I left.
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Category lead designer - trail running footwear and equipment SS12-SS13-SS14
Quechua (Decathlon)
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France
2010 - 2013 (3 years)
Lead the Nordic and Trail Running category from barely defined to brand relevance and credibility, through innovation, based on athlete insights, performance, and strong functional design language.
As category lead designer, presented the design directions before each season kick off.
created two innovations that I used on shoes and backpack, and later deployed them on further seasons.
The above two personal innovative products (RT-5 360° shoe, and Extend 0-12 backpack) were selected for the Observeur 2014 design award and exhibited in Paris. They are also published in the Observeur 2014 book.
The RT-5 and RT-3 trail running shoes got very good marks (among the best) in a comparative test conducted and published by Endurance Trail Magazin in 2012 (85 shoes tested) and 2013 (75 shoes tested).
Four trail running shoes and one hiking shoe published on ConceptKicks, a reference footwear blog that selects the best footwear projects.
Three trail running shoes featured on the Behance Product Design gallery.
Two trail running shoes featured by the Coroflot editorial team.
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Category lead designer - summer footwear SS13-SS14
Quechua (Decathlon)
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France
2012 - 2013 (1 year)
Gave a new direction to the footwear design, more athletic, with new colors, materials, processes and with a special focus on lightweight and seamless.
As category lead designer, presented the design directions before the season kick off.
Managed and briefed one internal designer and three external designers to garantee a clear design identity and ontime output.
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Senior Footwear designer
Quechua (Decathlon)
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France
Sep 2005 - 2012 (7 years)
Participated in many innovation workshops accross the Decathlon brands.
Co-inventor on snow shoe patents
Designed many very successful products such as Crossrock, a kid shoe that sold over 1.2 million pairs after only two seasons and became an icon for the brand, Tichanka that sold ten times faster than the ambitious forecast, and many more.
Contributed to quadruple Quechua’s gross revenue, from 480 millions to 1.7 billions Euros during my time (the footwear repreasents +/- 25% of the turnover with two designers).
Used Rhino to execute a 3D of a sole in order to obtain the right design from the mold maker.
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Senior Designer
Daewoo Electronics
Mar 2001 - Sep 2005 (4 years 6 months)
Did marketing analysis on consumer electronics and home appliance, and made design propositions for the European market.
Made a brand strategy analysis to point out how Daewoo could rebuild it’s brand relation to its consumers, and how the design could participate in it. Presented it to the CEO in Seoul Korea. That deepened my understanding of the brand to consumer connection. This also positioned the European Design Center as a key team for Daewoo.
When designed a line of Home cinema products, did it with a consistant design language.
Animated a design workshop to present many concept prototypes at IFA fair in Berlin 2003, with two design interns.
Hired and managed trainees.
insured smooth and fructful collaboration with external design partners.
Designed home Appliance and consumer electronics products.
Realized 3D modelisations on Pro-Engineer for both Consumer Electronics and Home Appliance.
Created a website for Daewoo France.
Managed the IT & network for the design studio (Macintosh)
Managed the creation and printing of the catalogs for Europe.
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Designer Ski Bindings
Skis Rossignol
Feb 1998 - Mar 2001 (3 years 1 month)
Actively participated in an ambitious innovation project within the Rossignol group (involving teams from the brands Look, Rossignol, Lange, Dynastar) about a ski/boot new type of interface.
Co-inventor on five patents.
Designed ski bindings and accessories for the brands Look and Rossignol.
Designed together with the plastic engineer a ski binding that was lighter and unbreakable during lab tests.
Designed the racing binding toe piece (in 1999) that is still used by the Rossignol FIS team.
Realized 3D modelisation on CDRS and Pro-Engineer for in-house prototyping.
I was also in charge of improving the products finishing, and for example, I reworked the tampography process in order to better associate the graphic and color design between the skis and the bindings.
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student
Ensci
1992 - 1997 (5 years)