About me
I’m Arina Scharff, a footwear and product designer with over a decade of experience in fashion, sports, and lifestyle industries. My work has earned international recognition, including designs used by Olympic athletes in 2021 and 2024. Notable achievements include creating the world’s most sustainable sneaker, a vegan shoe collaboration for Avatar II awarded by James Cameron, and signature designs for top skateboarders. I specialize in combining storytelling with functionality, creating designs that resonate with users while meeting market demands. From concept ideation and sketching to material selection and production-ready tech packs, I deliver end-to-end solutions tailored to your needs. As a consultant, I enhance brand identity, develop cohesive product assortments, and provide sustainable design strategies.
SERVICES.
1. Project-Based Design Services:
- End-to-end design for footwear and product in fashion and sport.
- Concept development, sketching, and rendering.
- Color and material exploration and product refinement.
- Tech pack & product development.
2. Consulting Sessions:
- Design Strategy & Brand Identity: Develop a strong, consistent brand language.
- Product Assortment & Planning: Ensure your product line aligns with market trends and customer needs.
- Color & Material Research: Stay ahead with innovative and on-trend palettes and textures.
- Sustainability Strategy: Create eco-conscious products without compromising style or functionality.
- Customer Profile & Competitor Analysis: Understand your audience and outshine the competition.
Work history
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Creative Design DirectorCariuma
- SingaporeFull Time
I lead the design department at Cariuma, where I develop the end-to-end corporate design direction and brand language through product, advance strategies in sustainability, life style, and sport, and oversee product development.
Life Style: At CARIUMA, I developed a successful lifestyle product assortment for e-commerce and wholesale, launching multiple seasonal collections focused on customer profiles. I collaborated with prominent designers, artists, and fashion brands.
Sustainability: We created one of the most sustainable shoe collections on the market with the lowest carbon footprint, using bamboo knit and sugarcane EVA.
Sport: We successfully developed a skateboarding product range from scratch that outperforms the functionality and durability of current skate shoes on the market. This led to the world’s top 16 skateboarders, including Olympic medalists, signing with Cariuma as brand ambassadors.
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Senior Footwear Designeradidas
- GermanyFull Time
Worked across multiple design departments to develop my expertise in colour, material, and shoe construction. My main responsibility was developing the global footwear product range for Adidas Neo, Adidas Core and Stella McCartney, concentrating on lifestyle, streetwear, and performance shoes.
Footwear Designer: I started with seasonal designs and strategies for Adidas NEO and Kids ranges. I then joined the Core team, working on running, basketball, court, training, and swimming products. In my final year, I collaborated with the Stella McCartney FTW team on the Fall/Winter collection.
Color & Material Designer: Before transitioning to footwear design, I worked as a color and material designer, enhancing my knowledge in footwear construction, materialization, and color development. I collaborated with the global creative design team, driving long-term color strategy and seasonal direction for colour and finish.
Skills
- Footwear Design
- Footwear Development
- Design Strategy
- Sustainable Design
- Sports Design
- Colour Design
- Trend Research
- Brand Design
- Prototyping
- Packaging Design