Kappa USA sportswear shopping app

Kappa USA sells the Italian sportswear brand's track jackets, ski gear, footwear and accessories to American customers. Techcelerant designed and built its shopping app for iOS and Android. The app puts the full range behind a set of category tabs, adds search to the top of the home screen, and gives shoppers coupons, buy now, pay later and several payment gateways at checkout.

The client

Kappa is known for its logo of two figures sitting back to back and for clothing that sits between athletic gear and streetwear. The US store carries everything from everyday tracksuits to technical ski jackets made for national teams. Customers range from people shopping for performance gear to fans of the brand's retro look, and many of them buy on their phones.

The problem

The range is wide, and the mobile web store made it hard to browse. Moving from men's clothing to footwear to kids' sizes took too many taps, and seasonal launches were easy to miss. The client's team also wanted to offer more flexible payment, including installment payments, and to run coupon campaigns that worked smoothly on phones.

We needed to:

• Make every major category reachable from the home screen.
• Give shoppers fast search for when they know what they want.
• Feature each new season prominently.
• Support coupons, installment payments and more than one payment gateway.

What we built

The app opens on a home screen built around navigation and new arrivals:

• A row of scrolling category tabs under the logo: Mens, Womens, Kids, Accessories and Footwear. The active tab is underlined in Kappa red.
• A search bar right below the tabs for direct product lookups.
• A black banner that tells shoppers they can buy now and pay later with Afterpay.
• A large seasonal hero image, such as the fall new arrivals campaign, with a "Shop now" link.
• Product rows for each collection, like the men's fall line, with a "View all" link and two-column product cards showing the image, name, color and price.
• A cart with coupon code entry and a checkout connected to multiple payment gateways, including Afterpay.

The side menu holds account settings, orders and the less common pages, which keeps the home screen focused on shopping.

Design decisions

We kept the interface white and let Kappa's red logo carry the brand. Red shows up again only in small places: the active tab, the underline, and key labels. That makes the logo stand out at the top of the screen and keeps product photos clear.

Putting the category tabs before anything else was the main structural choice. Kappa's shoppers tend to arrive with a category in mind, and a horizontal tab row lets them get there in one tap. The row scrolls, so more categories can be added later without a redesign.

The Afterpay banner sits above the hero image on purpose. It's simple, high-contrast text that answers a payment question shoppers often have before they start browsing expensive items like ski jackets.

Product cards are in a two-column grid with centered names. Technical product names can be long, and the centered layout lets them wrap neatly without crowding the price.

The result

Kappa USA has a shopping app on both the App Store and Google Play. Customers can jump between the five main categories, search the catalog, browse each season's new arrivals, apply coupons, and pay in full or in installments. The client's team can feature a new collection on the home screen and run coupon promotions that work inside the app.

If you're weighing payment and checkout options for your own app, our post on ecommerce checkout optimization covers the basics.

Need a shopping app for a large catalog? See our mobile app development service or contact us.