Canadian Tire Product Development

Industrial Design for Private Label

This role gave a very wholistic view of the product development process. I mainly worked on two brands, Vermont Castings and Vida by Paderno, though I also provided support to several other teams. Per brand, our team was working on product assortments for two different seasons at a time. We would be directly involved in the process from start to finish, advising on the selection of the assortment items, designing the product direction, communicating with manufacturers, and approving samples and merchandising. As an Industrial designer, this gave me a good understanding of the needs of a company beyond just the design and function of a product.

Cross-functional Collaboration

This role required constant cross-collaboration between brand, merchandising, Quality assurance, and product development stakeholders. In order to make decisions and to progress through projects, all teams needed to consider the needs of the others in order to deliver a successful product. Though this could cause friction at times, our team's ability to negotiate, empathize, and adapt demonstrated everyone's commitment to quality and ability to drive positive results.

Vida by Paderno Pizza Oven with Rotating Stone

2022 Product of the Year Winner

The Vida by Paderno Pizza Oven was a project developed for the 2022 season. This product aimed to create a more enjoyable pizza cooking experience compared to the top-performing products in the category while adhering to the Vida by Paderno brand guidelines.

Turning a Pizza: Tedious, Stressful, but Necessary

At the outset of the project we conducted benchmark testing of the most popular pizza ovens. We found that a common pain amongst many users was turning the pizza. Pizza ovens are excellent at cooking pizzas, but if your are not quick enough when turning your pizza you will burn your final product. Turning a pizza with a peel takes practice to do well, thus making it likely that you will be a bit slow turning your pizzas for awhile.

Our Solution: A Hand-Operated Lazy Susan to Make Turning Easier

After brainstorming solutions for the problem, we started to ask ourselves "What if you could turn the pizza inside the oven?". From there, we worked with our vendor to develop the function of hand-cranking the pizza stone to minimize the complexity of the pizza turning process. To fully round out the product offering and tie it back to other releases that year, we also added a smoker box to the pizza oven so pizzas could be infused with woodfired flavor.

Vermont Castings Stainless Steel Patio Heater

2023 Grand Prix Award Winner

The Vermont Castings Stainless Steel Patio Heater was a product developed for 2022. This project posed some unique challenges that our team needed to overcome. Primarily, how do you differentiate in a category like patio heaters where there is rigid regulation and common designs across all brands?

Differentiating under cost and regulatory Constraints

This project posed an interesting challenge. We needed to provide an elevated experience, but we had limited budget flexibility and were operating in a category where most products looked the same. The heating category has strict safety regulations, meaning any radical design change must be carefully considered.

Our Solution: An Improved Burner and Heat Rings to Retain and Radiate Heat

After considering the problem for awhile and looking at samples, we started to talk about frankensteining parts together from different heaters. We decided to try and add things to the burner to see if we could improve performance with small changes.

Lab Testing and Validation

The vendor conducted controlled tests of each configuration and was able to identify the strongest configuration. With simple, aesthetically distinctive changes to the burner, the end result was 15% better than the standard model of patio heater with respect to heat output.