Brian Fenn

Product leader. Builder. Operator across consumer, commerce, and craft.

Lake Oswego, Oregonbrian@illogicalproject.comillogicalproject.comlinkedin.com/in/bfennDetent (iOS)

Open to rolesSenior Director / VP Product

Brian Fenn is a senior product leader with 25 years across Nike, Dick's Sporting Goods, Amazon, Microsoft, Zillow, and Porch. He takes on the unglamorous work — failing platforms, fragmented orgs, hard market entries — and turns it into the flagship experience that ships at scale. He has built and led teams at every scale — from a two-person PM group to a 20+ person product org, while leading a 120-person cross-functional studio — rescued a checkout from half-broken to 90%+ on day one, protected a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream through China's localization migration, and co-authored the PM career ladder for a 300-person product organization. Currently building consumer products at illogicalproject and open to Senior Director / VP Product roles.

Selected achievements

Now

illogicalproject · Founder
2025 – PresentLake Oswego, OR
  • Personal studio building consumer products end-to-end — iOS, web, design, content, and the operating model behind them.
  • Detent: native iOS coffee app with a Next.js web companion at detent.illogicalproject.com. A calmer surface for a category drowning in noise — opinionated defaults, no engagement traps.
  • The Chivalrous Walrus and Bottle & Flame: two additional studio builds shipped end-to-end.
  • Publishing essays on product leadership, scale, and craft on LinkedIn.

Selected experience

Dick's Sporting Goods · Senior Director, Product Management & Design — Store Technology
2024 – 2025Remote
  • Set the multi-year Connected Store strategy for 800+ stores and 40,000+ teammates — hardware modernization, applications, AI-based labor scheduling, inventory optimization.
  • Led the 100% rollout of the new POS across the fleet; piloted mobile checkout; shipped RFID platform upgrades and landed an exclusive multipurpose-device partnership that unlocked AI-driven teammate workflows.
  • Restructured the design org, promoted four people inside a year, and earned a Design Advocacy Council seat at the executive level.
Nike · Senior Director, Product Management — Search, Browse & Discover + Central PM
2022 – 2024Portland, OR
  • Ran two teams (5 + 30+) across the surfaces serving 100M+ active users on Nike's direct-to-consumer properties.
  • Protected the enterprise generative AI investment for search and ranking through a company-wide restructure — the program shipped to production with double-digit engagement lift and nine-figure incremental demand.
  • Ran the first-ever Nike Digital Summit — got business, product, design, engineering, and insights working from a single roadmap, persona model, and OKR set.
  • Rebuilt the global navigation as a componentized platform — 3x engineering efficiency across consumer surfaces.
  • Co-authored the new PM career ladder for the 300-person Nike Direct Product organization during a company-wide restructure. Promoted two PMs to Director.
Nike · Senior Director, Product Management & Head of Studio — Greater China
2018 – 2022Shanghai, China
  • Relocated to Shanghai to lead the Greater China digital product organization, supporting mainland China.
  • Scaled the product team from 2 to 20+ and managed a 120+ cross-functional studio across product, design, and engineering — promoted leaders into seats they grew into.
  • Led the migration of all consumer experiences into mainland China to meet compliance requirements — protected a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream and unlocked nine-figure incremental demand. Maxim Award finalist.
  • Built the WeChat Retail Platform during the COVID lockdown — first consumer shopping experience designed and built entirely in China — and the Tmall 3D Avatar Membership, the first brand experience Alibaba invited a partner to co-innovate on their platform. WeChat program won the Maxim Award; Tmall delivered a record Double Eleven.
Nike · Senior Product Manager, Common Components
2016 – 2018Portland, OR
  • Shipped v1 of Nike App and re-launched Nike Run Club + Nike Training Club for the Rio 2016 Olympics marketing campaign — opened Nike's direct-to-consumer strategy.
  • Owned the shared mobile platform — Feed, sharing, cart, checkout — across Nike App, SNKRS, Nike Run Club, and Nike Training Club.
  • Rescued the failing wrapped-webview checkout: from ~50% success to 90%+ on the day-one A/B. New-market integration time dropped from ~6 months to ~2.
  • Extended the same tray-based platform to power Nike App Self-Checkout, the pinnacle feature of the House of Innovation NYC flagship launch. Maxim Award.

Earlier experience

Work & writing

Education

  • Whitman College · B.A., Psychology
    Varsity Swimming, Club Water Polo

Recognition

  • Nike Maxim Award — House of Innovation NYC Self-Checkout · 2018
  • Nike Maxim Award — WeChat Retail Platform (mini-program), Greater China · 2018
  • Nike Maxim Award Finalist — China-for-China consumer experience migration
  • Microsoft Gold Star — leadership of core Bing UX during brand release · 2009

Skills & tools

Leadership

  • Product strategy
  • Org design and scaling (PM team 2 → 20+; cross-functional studio 120+)
  • Executive partnership and air cover
  • Hiring, promotion, and PM career ladder design
  • Cross-functional leadership across product, design, engineering, research
  • Servant leadership and coaching
  • Operating in matrixed multinationals

Design

  • Consumer experience design
  • Design leadership and team restructure
  • User research (qualitative + quantitative)
  • Design systems and componentization
  • Editorial and brand systems for product surfaces

Technical

  • iOS (Swift, SwiftUI)
  • Next.js, React, TypeScript
  • REST and GraphQL
  • AI / LLM product integration
  • Search, ranking, and recommendations
  • A/B testing and experimentation
  • Native and web platform architecture

Domains

  • Commerce and marketplaces
  • Mobile checkout and payments
  • Search, browse, and discovery
  • Retail technology and store operations
  • International expansion (China, Europe)
  • Consumer health and wellness adjacent
  • 0 → 1 product
  • Platform → innovation → scale playbook