Interview with Lana Rush - Head of Marketing at Osprey London

Hi Lana, you are Head of Marketing at Osprey London. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background? And how did you end up at Osprey London?

I began my professional career in the world of sports, competing internationally for 10 years as a professional tennis player representing Great Britain. One of my proudest moments was competing at Wimbledon. When an injury abruptly ended my tennis journey, I pivoted to academics, getting both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Marketing in the U.S., with a focus on fashion—a field that has very much gone hand-in-hand with my career ever since.

Brand marketing was always the path I wanted to pursue, largely inspired by my firsthand experience with sponsorships during my tennis career. Every brand has something to offer, but when you genuinely believe in its purpose and can craft meaningful stories and authentic connections between the brand, the product, and the audience, it creates something truly inspiring.

Fast forward several years and that passion for storytelling and connection is what drew me to my previous roles and, most importantly, to where I am today at OSPREY LONDON. Funnily enough, the last three brands I’ve worked for have all been founder-led. While it can be chaotic at times, there’s nothing quite like the energy that fuels a founder-driven brand.

How did you approach the challenge of translating Osprey’s offline brand identity into a digital experience and flagship store?

I took on the role with the goal of transforming OSPREY LONDON’s brand identity and revitalising its perception in the market. Founded in 1980, the brand has built an incredibly strong physical retail presence across the UK, making OSPREY a household name—an rare opportunity in itself. But when it came to translating its offline identity into a digital presence, it was important to recognise that whilst it is a heritage British brand, its true USP lies in its founders.

To shift its past-dated digital perception, we began by revisiting our brand guidelines, ensuring we clearly defined our heritage story, mission, vision, brand pillars, differentiators, fonts, colour palettes… you name it. It’s been a journey, but the result is a cohesive set of materials that truly represent OSPREY LONDON and a unified understanding across the business of our direction.

To put it simply, storytelling has been at the core of everything—both at the brand level and with our products. And it remains a key focus today.

How does the new flagship store reflect Osprey’s values and resonate with your target audience’s lifestyle?

With the help of Grebban, we redefined our customer profiles—not by age or demographics, but by shopping behaviours, which makes much more sense for us. We identified key groups: heritage customers, pleasure seekers, rationalisers, and gifters, each with their own set of needs and challenges. Different areas of our website are tailored to meet these needs while also reinforcing ‘The Osprey Way,’ which is all about putting the customer first and celebrating our passion for leather in a unique, authentic way.

Graeme and Alex (our Founder and Creative Director—who are also husband and wife) have always had an unapologetic love of leather, and pour their hearts into every collection. Everything we create is purpose-driven, from the materials to the linings and every detail in between. This philosophy has shaped our entire approach, influencing all aspects from product detail pages and filters to feature blocks and the overall brand universe.

The site offers a lot of new features—were there any technical components you pushed for specifically from a marketing and brand standpoint?

Since we launched just before the peak season (slightly terrifying), several of my brand passion projects were postponed to Q1 of this year. The one I’m most excited about is our “Bag Finder”—a gamified gifting tool that allows customers to search based on attributes. The idea is to replicate the natural thought process of browsing for a bag in person.

Shopping should be fun and effortless! We have a number of other exciting features in the pipeline, including a ‘Shuffle Button’ to discover products spontaneously and an interactive heritage timeline to showcase our brand’s story in a dynamic way.

How does the platform allow you to create more personalized and tailored experiences, and what impact do you see this having in the future?

The beauty of our platform lies in its scalability, allowing us to continuously evolve and enhance personalised content. This was a key reason we selected Storyblok as our CMS—its ability to deliver tailored content by region, including language and asset customisation, will be a game-changer as we ramp up paid campaigns in international markets.

But now, our integration with Ingrid marks the first step in creating unique, personalised journeys for OSPREY customers. By giving them the option to select delivery dates, delivery couriers, etc., we not only empower them with greater choices to boost conversion rates but also introduce the seamless omnichannel experience we previously lacked. We’re trialling, testing, and rolling out new features on this platform every month, and the possibilities are really exciting.

You worked closely with multiple teams on this project—how did you bring together brand, design, and tech to create a cohesive platform?

It’s a little cliché, but sports made me a BIG believer in collaboration. I’ve always naturally taken on leadership roles, both on and off the court, and I firmly believe that building a future-proof team is where the magic happens—but you have to lean into that.

When I joined the company, I spearheaded our digital transformation, which included re-platforming and selecting the right agency to help us achieve this vision. Throughout the process, marketing-specific goals remained a key focus. But honestly, Marketing and E-commerce have always been incredibly interchangeable no matter where I’ve worked, and this project was no different.

I have to give a lot of credit to our Head of E-commerce, Ben Jones. He worked on Magento for seven years before I arrived, and I completely changed things up for him. Thankfully, we’re good friends and work very well together.

What feedback have you received from customers, stakeholders, or the team since the new site went live?

It’s an immense sense of pride—this is the digital flagship store for an iconic British heritage brand, and it’s something that not only excites our internal stakeholders but, most importantly, has our founders proudly sharing and celebrating it. We have had initial customer feedback rounds, but I want to do a big piece around this before building out what “loyalty” means to us.

What are the next steps or priorities for you and the team as you continue to develop Osprey’s digital presence and flagship store?

I’m incredibly ambitious, so the sky’s the limit. But to define my key goals for 2025 in just a few words, they would be:

• Internationalisation
• Loyalty
• Omnichannel
• Personalisation (with a strong focus on leveraging AI)
• Video video video

How do you see the luxury and fashion e-commerce space evolving in the next few years?

Brand transparency. And no, that doesn’t necessarily mean sustainability. Customers are immune to the same recycled slogans and buzzwords. The industry leaders are those who dare to be unique and take creative risks, both visually and in their messaging. As an independent label, we have the freedom to carve our own path, and we’re proud to do so. We unapologetically love leather and celebrate the rich, ancient craftsmanship behind it.

Looking forward, how do you plan to keep the brand experience fresh and aligned with Osprey’s growth?

We are a founder-led brand, with Graeme and Alex at the heart, that is the essence of OSPREY LONDON. Collaborating with the right partners—those who are equally inspired and invested in the brand—is key to our success. Growth is a vast, collective effort, and fostering those relationships is essential to keeping the momentum going.

What emerging trends in digital marketing and branding do you see impacting Osprey’s future strategy?

Loyalty is a major focus. Building repeat customers and fostering genuine brand affinity is crucial for sustained growth. With Grebban’s help, we’ve defined our customer profiles, but the next step is diving deeper into the data behind them and creating a brand world tailored specifically to their needs and preferences. We don’t want to find another plugin to achieve this, but instead build something tailored and interactive with our brand DNA.

How do you envision the digital flagship evolving to support new products, campaigns, or customer experiences in the future?

As you know, we’re only at V1 of where we envision our digital flagship, and the next few months will be exciting as we roll out some incredible features. These include a ‘Shuffle Button’ designed to boost UPT and encourage product discovery, as well as a gamified shopping experience with our ‘Bag Finder’. Both are truly unique, and I can’t wait to see them in action. FINALLY!!

Beyond that, we’re planning to build our loyalty initiative this year, as I alluded to above. This will very much tie into to supporting newness, testing new product lines, building a 2-way community, and involving our customers in our product journey. This is something Graeme, as a customer-focused founder, is especially excited about.