After returning from international travel, I was brought in as Interim Marketing Director for Lucky Shots Pickleball to establish the strategic and technical marketing foundation the business needed to grow. The owner recognized the need to invest in marketing but lacked clarity around structure, systems, and long-term direction. Over eight months, I built that foundation while simultaneously executing day-to-day marketing initiatives to maintain momentum and prepare the business for scalable expansion.
Brand Strategy & Identity Development
In partnership with Brandall Design Co., I led the development of a comprehensive brand strategy that defined Lucky Shots’ positioning, messaging framework, visual identity, and voice. I authored the brand narrative and strategic direction, which Brandall translated into a formal brand deck. The refreshed identity embraced vibrant colors and a vintage tennis/country club aesthetic, intentionally differentiating the brand from the generic look common across pickleball clubs. This gave Lucky Shots a distinctive, ownable identity built to support long-term brand equity and multi-location growth.
Website overhauls & SEO Strategy implementation
With the new brand foundation established, I spearheaded a full website redevelopment. After meeting with several agencies, I selected Brandography based on their ability to balance strong SEO/AEO expertise with elevated design execution. I directed the site’s strategy and structure to ensure it functioned as both a high-performing acquisition channel and an educational resource for new players. We built dedicated landing pages for class schedules and open play and implemented a comprehensive SEO strategy to drive organic discovery. The site reduced friction for first-time players by answering key questions and positioning Lucky Shots as an accessible, welcoming club.
When I arrived, the club’s booking platform, Court Reserve, lacked true CRM capabilities, offering only basic mass email functionality without analytics, segmentation, or design tools. After raising this gap repeatedly with their team, I was connected with the CEO and secured early access to a beta integration with Patch. I implemented and operationalized the system, enabling custom audience segmentation, branded email design, performance analytics, synchronized email capture from booking activity, and SMS marketing capabilities. This transformed Lucky Shots’ marketing from reactive email blasts into a data-informed lifecycle strategy that supported retention, engagement, and revenue growth.
CRM & Marketing Systems Integration
Go-To-Market, Retail Execution, and Infrastructure
During my time at Flying Cloud, I focused on improving sell-through performance as the brand expanded into physical retail through national and regional distribution partners. While initial sales velocity from seeding product into stores was strong, sell-through at active accounts proved slow and inconsistent.
At the time, the company had no dedicated, in-market sales presence to support physical retail. Growth expectations relied heavily on distributors, without complementary incentive structures, POS materials, promotional programs, or coordinated digital and out-of-home marketing to drive consumer demand. As the brand scaled nationally, I used performance data, market research, and distributor feedback to demonstrate that a dedicated in-market sales presence was critical for success in the adult beverage category.
Working with leadership, we quickly began building a field sales team to establish physical presence across key markets. This shift improved retail partner support, merchandising and product education at the point of sale, and alignment between distributor activity and in-market demand generation.
Building out the sales team, combined with the strategic shifts outlined below, helped stabilize underperforming markets and bring them to profitability. This included seeding more new accounts, strengthening distributor relationships, increasing sell-through at the point of sale, and shortening reorder cycles
design Optimization for shelf conversion
One of the most significant barriers to sell-through was packaging design. The existing can design lacked a clear front-facing hierarchy of information and suffered from formatting and font inconsistencies. From a single shelf-facing angle, consumers could not easily identify the brand name, flavor, or key product attributes, often requiring them to physically handle the can to understand what they were purchasing.
I led the recommendation and development of a packaging redesign focused on improving readability, design consistency, and front-facing communication while preserving the core brand vision. After an extended review and iteration process, the updated design improved shelf clarity and reduced cognitive load at the point of purchase.
Rebate Programs & In-Market Tastings
Rebate programs paired with in-store tastings and digital support were our largest needs for sell-through and a top request from distributor partners. These initiatives were especially important for driving trial in a regulated category.
I evaluated multiple rebate platforms, most of which declined to support THC beverages due to regulatory concerns. I ultimately identified Brij, a trusted partner in the adult beverage space willing to support the category, and negotiated a reduced service rate of $750 per month (down from $1,000) plus a waiver of their 1,500 setup fee. I also sourced tasting rep services across our markets, averaging ~$200 per four-hour tasting, creating a scalable framework for trial and activation.
While the full program was not implemented due to broader organizational prioritization and budget considerations, we addressed the need by cross-training our sales team to schedule and conduct tastings independently. Though limited in frequency (1–4 tastings per rep per week) and balanced against sales responsibilities, this approach enabled continued in-market activation without additional budget and supported retail sell-through.
POS Print, Fulfillment & Distributor Enablement Strategy
As distribution expanded, effective in-market support required significant investment in POS materials across diverse markets. Market managers and distributor sales teams regularly requested a wide range of assets: sell sheets, posters, cooler clings, shelf talkers, display cases, and branded promotional items—creating operational complexity at scale.
When I first arrived at Flying Cloud, my team was fielding distributor print requests individually, which introduced unnecessary labor, duplicate shipping costs, slow turnaround times, and created friction with our distributors due to varying distributor cost-share agreements.
To address this, I designed a scalable print, warehousing, and fulfillment strategy centered on a third-party partner capable of supporting national distribution. I sourced and negotiated a proposed partnership with The Shamrock Companies, leveraging aggregated print volumes to reduce per-unit costs and centralize fulfillment.
The proposed solution was designed to:
Reduce operational inefficiencies by eliminating duplicate shipping and in-house fulfillment labor
Lower per-unit print costs through volume aggregation across multiple asset types
Enable rapid, on-demand ordering through a distributor-facing online portal
Automatically apply contract-specific cost-share rules to reduce billing friction
Flood key markets with consistent, well-designed POS materials
Improve distributor and field sales enablement in fast-moving retail environments
While the initiative was not implemented due to broader organizational prioritization and budget considerations, the work established a clear framework for how relatively modest infrastructure investments could meaningfully improve retail execution and sell-through performance.
In stride, we worked within our constraints to reduce costs and improve speed to market by shifting fulfillment toward our newly built field sales team. We began small batch ordering materials directly to in-market sales representatives rather than routing shipments through a central warehouse. This approach reduced redundant shipping costs, increased the total volume of materials deployed into the market, and improved responsiveness to local needs.
Although this solution was not as scalable as a dedicated third-party warehousing partner, it produced measurable improvements and supported the retail growth we were able to achieve under existing constraints.
