Reimagining Belstaff for a New Generation of Global Customers

The client

Belstaff

Belstaff was founded in 1924 in Staffordshire by Eli Belovitch and his son-in-law Harry Grosberg, the name a contraction of Belovitch and Staffordshire. The company built its reputation on waxed-cotton motorcycle clothing, among the first in the world to make technical waterproof garments for riders, and its four-pocket Trialmaster jacket, introduced in 1948, became one of the most recognisable pieces in motorcycling. Che Guevara crossed South America in one. Sammy Miller won championships in one.

A century on, Belstaff is a global luxury outerwear house, acquired by British sportswear brand Castore from INEOS in August 2025, and sold through its own stores, belstaff.com and premium wholesale partners worldwide. What has never changed is what the brand stands for: hard-wearing, purposeful British clothing built for the road. Our work sat inside its next chapter, translating a hundred years of heritage into a modern, measurable digital business.

The challenge

For more than a hundred years, British heritage fashion brand Belstaff has established a legacy built on craftsmanship and exceptional service. In its centenary year, the brand faced a pivotal moment: redefining how it connected with customers online, whilst ensuring its values of quality, trust, and personal service translated into a digital shopping experience.

Following a deliberate development pause to complete a migration to a modern, headless ecommerce architecture, Belstaff needed to unlock the full potential of the new platform in ways that would resonate with long-standing customers and a new generation of global shoppers.

Our approach

The approach focused on analysing customer behaviours and using data-led insight to guide confident decision-making. Deep analysis of user interactions across the site enabled us to develop a clear optimisation framework for the brand to prioritise changes that would deliver tangible commercial impact.

To drive urgency and increase conversion, we introduced personalised countdown timers on product detail pages, paired with targeted upsells for Next Day Delivery. This resulted in a 30% increase in customers selecting NDD over standard shipping.

By analysing how users interacted with product imagery, we optimised shot selection and presentation across key categories. This not only improved engagement, but also streamlined studio output, recouping significant annual production costs.

Alongside this, we implemented a sophisticated product recommendation engine, tailored by user type, affinity, purchase history, and real-time session behaviour. This layer of personalisation generated substantial assisted conversions and reinforced ease of discovery for customers.

Finally, we established a structured, hypothesis-led testing framework that embedded a culture of experimentation across teams. This empowered Belstaff to move faster, make confident, data-driven decisions, and continuously optimise based on real customer insights.