Insider first. Builder second. Both at the same time.
I run Loop Trails. I build the Loop for outdoor, retail, and hospitality brands — production software that closes what to make, where to spend, and what to stock into one system your team runs and you own. Designed by someone who actually knows the business. Built by the same person.
The insider advantage.
I’ve been in the room during the hard calls — two decades inside brands like Red Bull, REI, Vail Resorts, and Smartwool, plus a B2B2C startup I built from the ground up.
The value isn’t the logo list. It’s the messy, cross-functional work of turning strategy into something customers actually feel — knowing what a compressed Q4 timeline does to a marketing team, how retail math actually constrains decisions, why the ops team won’t adopt a tool that adds steps, and what “good” looks like when a real person has to use the output.
This means no orientation period. I already understand the seasonal and annual planning cycles, the agency relationships, the internal politics between brand and performance teams, the way product launches compress timelines.
Now I bring that operator’s eye to AI — cutting past the hype to find the handful of workflows that genuinely move a business, then building them so your team owns the outcome. AI designed for how the team actually works, not how a technologist imagines they work.
Tech I’ve shipped.
- Saltwolf: custom WooCommerce site with custom 3D product visualization across 4,900 SKUs, wired into a marketing automation platform.
- Smartwool: deployed a new CDP and email platform.
- VF Corporation: launched the first use of dynamic ad creative, producing thousands of units and cut creative team workload by 60%.
- REI: built REI’s first mobile shopping app; designed and deployed a distributed social media management platform.
- Loop Trails: production TypeScript systems with CI, staging, and heartbeat monitoring; a client portal; and a creative-ops system live in production for a DTC brand today.
The pattern: shipping working systems, at founder and enterprise scale. The difference now is that I write the code myself. Case studies land once clients approve publication.
Rae Lakes Loop Trail, California
Two weeks to a straight answer.
The Loop Diagnostic is a fixed fee, credited toward the build. If your data can’t support the build, I’ll tell you so.