About Fleet Feet

Fleet Feet⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is a specialty running retail franchisor with a vision to inspire the runner in everyone. With over 270 stores across the United States, Fleet Feet aims to be the go-to resource for runners in every community. With four decades of experience, Fleet Feet uses modern data analysis to offer runners personalized outfitting services for shoes and apparel.

Summary: Canva addresses Fleet Feet's design needs by simplifying workflows, improving teamwork across over 270 franchise and company-owned stores, and centralizing all branding materials on a single cloud platform.

• Canva features and templates used: Brand Kit, Resize & Magic Switch, Video Editor, Canva Print, GIF Creator, QR Code Generator
  
• Fleet Feet teams using Canva: 281 Canva users, including Marketing, Brand, Design and HR teams within the corporate offices.
  

ROI:

• With Canva’s templates, Fleet Feet’s Digital Marketing Manager saves 120 design hours annually.
• Reduced video and motion graphic design time from three hours to just 15 minutes.
• Saved thousands in resourcing costs by empowering staff to self-serve on-brand templates in Canva.

The Challenge

Before Fleet Feet embraced Canva, their central design team created ongoing marketing materials for nearly 150 store locations. With explosive growth, their store count grew to more than 270 doors in two years, and keeping up with design requests felt like running a marathon with no finish line.

The Fleet Feet in-house marketing team creates campaigns at both a national and local level. And, while assets are designed to suit multiple markets, the majority of stores have sales and seasonal promotions that need to be customized to suit their local regions.

Access to design software and resources at a store level was also limited, making it challenging for teams to roll out localized sales and campaigns quickly and efficiently.

“We want to change people's lives in our communities,” says Caleb Wilkie, Fleet Feet’s Senior Graphic Designer. “Fleet Feet has a core brand identity. But, the needs are different at every store. Some markets are blessed to have someone like our Digital Marketing Manager Molly McQueeny, who has design experience on staff. Other stores are not. They're small, locally-owned enterprises and don’t have a designer on staff.”

From a national perspective, the goal was to tailor marketing initiatives more closely to individual stores while elevating the overall quality of their marketing, and enabling the organization to expand into new regions.

Simple tasks, like editing a basic poster, or customizing flyers became obstacles for Caleb and the small design team, often consuming upwards of three hours per project.

“I can’t spend time filling out every single store’s address on a poster when we have 300 stores,” says Caleb. “Canva changed all that.”

The demand for animated content, like GIFs and videos for social media or newsletters, forced managers to outsource to freelancers at a great expense, or personally tackle tasks with inconsistent results.

“Most franchises and locations do not have a graphic designer on staff or the resources to use freelance support consistently.” says Caleb. “Canva allows us to create high-quality assets that can then be customized by our local teams in a way that maintains a professional and consistent look for our brand.”

To combat the growing need for more assets and cater to the needs of local and national Fleet Feet stores, the organization turned to Canva. Caleb and the design team worked closely with Canva to set up hundreds of pre-made branded templates that teams could easily access within the platform.

This simplified the design process for employees, making it easier for them to tailor their promotions and sales to suit their local markets while staying on-brand with corporate-approved designs.

“The customization in Canva is huge, because we wanted to increase the professionalism of our marketing, but we didn't want to leave store owners behind as we did that,” says Caleb.

The Solution

By empowering team members, especially those without formal design experience, Canva has facilitated the effortless creation of on-brand marketing materials at scale.

“I don't have any formal design training,” says Nora Ayers, Director of the Fleet Feet Running Club in Carrboro and Durham. “Canva has been immensely helpful and time-saving for me. I can take anything Caleb designs and turn it into a template.

“I can make different flyers for each of my training groups look unified. They’re all in one place. I can copy those templates over from season to season, change a couple of things, and they’re ready to publish. Something that used to take hours is now very quick.”

As a one-stop design and storage solution, Canva also simplified how teams create, collaborate, and share designs without losing important work.

“One of the main benefits of Canva is having multiple parties make edits simultaneously and have it stored in the Cloud, rather than saving and re-saving files, and sending attachments back and forth,” says Molly McQueeny, Fleet Feet Chicago’s Digital Marketing Manager.

“Being able to pull up a design from one store and share it with another store is fantastic,” says Nora. “Someone can make something and then share it out to use in every store. That’s phenomenal.”

Localize marketing efforts with ease

The introduction of Canva Print revolutionized how Fleet Feet stores make in-store signage and promotional materials.

Now, stores can tailor their designs to align with the local market while continuing to build brand consistency.

The ability to print posters and merchandise with Canva ensures stores without professional design staff can continue to maintain quality with convenience.

“I’ve designed shirts and other products in Canva, and sent the files to our local screen printer within the platform,” says Nora. “It’s wonderful to have the resources of Canva.”

This printing process in Canva has saved Fleet Feet staff both time and money, allowing for faster, localized content creation for wider teams.

Unlocking efficiencies across the board

Canva empowers Fleet Feet teams to create and visually communicate on-brand content with ease and speed.

“A lot of these folks aren't marketers, they’re store owners,” says Caleb. Our templates help them create professional level marketing designs with less work, allowing them to better be that local face for running in their community.”

The freedom to quickly swap out images, modify designs, and update details within templates has decreased turnaround times and allowed stores to promote timely campaigns in a fast-paced retail environment.

With Canva’s Brand Kit, Fleet Feet teams have one-stop access to logos, fonts, and brand colors within a central location. This gives staff the autonomy to quickly swap out images, modify designs, and update details within pre-made templates, dramatically cutting turnaround time.

“Having templates already set up, rather than starting from scratch, has helped us a lot,” says Molly. “With Brand Kit, I'm not going back to our brand guidelines and copying hex codes with each design.”

Using Canva’s pre-made templates, Molly has personally saved 10 hours per month, or 120 hours in design time annually.

Canva’s Video Editor has also reduced the workload and improved efficiency for Molly and her team, aiding the fast production of scroll-stopping GIFs and Instagram Reels for social media, company newsletters, and seasonal campaigns.

“Everyone expects you to be a video producer, designer, and editor,” says Molly. “You could either take the time to learn complicated software, or you can use assets you already have.

Creating multi-platform campaigns has never been easier thanks to Resize & Magic Switch, which Caleb says, saves him and his team time, allowing designs to be quickly adjusted to various formats with ease.

“I’ve used Resize & Magic Switch to adjust the size of designs,” says Caleb. “I use it all the time. It's a lot faster than copying and pasting, or uploading and dragging design elements from the asset panel.”

Savings and empowering team members

With Canva, Fleet Feet teams have tools to autonomously create internal and external visuals, enabling continued brand consistency.

“Canva is a great shortcut for good content,” says Molly. “It's very user-friendly. I would say the ease of use is the best part.”

As a result, the company has saved money on freelance designers, allowing for considerable cost savings and improved efficiencies.

“We would never be able to have a design team large enough at corporate to handle every single creative need from our 250-plus locations, and not every franchise has the resources to hire a dedicated creative team or tools.” says Caleb. “The cost for Canva is much more affordable for our many different markets."

Canva has made affordability and efficiency at scale possible at Fleet Feet, proving a valuable asset for the entire retail franchise.