EJ Gallo Winery
Scalable design system powering multi-brand commerce
A flexible design system supporting online shopping and wine subscriptions across multiple brands,
with shared components that adapt to each brand’s distinct visual identity.
Role
Product Strategy
Design System
Product Design
Team
2 Designers
1 Manager
5 Developers
2 Product Owners
Impact
30 websites launched in one year, with
2,000+ subscriptions gained within a year of launch.
Timeline
2021 - 2022
Tools
Figma
Product Overview
.jpg)
Problem
Disconnected shopping experiences contributed to
low wine club enrolment.
E. & J. Gallo needed to bring 100+ wine brands onto a shared commerce platform while preserving each brand’s identity and improving purchase and sign-up journeys to encourage wine club enrollment.
Design Strategy
Accelerate brand onboarding with headless architecture
Having the front-end decoupled from the back-end commerce functionalities meant the brands could be onboarded much faster. It provided the brands the opportunity to personalise purchase journeys and customise their store fronts.
-
Commerce sites prioritised shopping through product carousels
-
Omnichannel sites prioritised membership cards followed by product carousels
-
Non-commerce sites focused on content and catalogs without shopping carousels
Translate brand identity into design tokens
I mapped each brand’s colors, typography, and borders into a shared design token structure. This allowed reusable components to reflect each brand’s identity while maintaining a consistent foundation across the platform.
Apply brand tokens (primitive & semantic) to the shared design system
I applied these tokens to reusable components within the shared design system. This enabled teams to assemble distinct brand storefronts for deployment on the headless platform.
Landing Page
Responsive
Product Listing Page
Responsive
Wine Subscription
Design Components
I translated shared design tokens into reusable elements, components, and modules - creating a scalable system that maintains consistent interactions while allowing each storefront to express its distinct brand identity.
Design Specifications
I created a design specification playbook defining component behavior, responsive layouts, and customization rules, helping teams build consistent experiences while preserving each brand’s identity.
Reflections
Scaling across brands means knowing what to standardize and where to allow flexibility.
I came to see brand onboarding as a repeatable process rather than a new design project each time. Headless architecture provided the flexibility, but the design system made it usable for teams—clarifying what designers could customize and what developers could reuse. Moving faster depended on making those decisions explicit.
Let's Build
Together
© 2026 Shimona Roy