American Grit

Project Overview

Grunt Style approached Skyrocket Digital with a challenge: to revitalize American Grit, a blog that had once served to amplify Grunt Style's voice. Over time, American Grit had failed to keep pace with the explosive growth of Grunt Style as a retailer and content creator. The blog no longer reflected the brand’s expanding influence or engaged its loyal community.

Recognizing the potential in American Grit, Grunt Style wanted to reimagine it as a dynamic media platform that would not only project the brand’s humor, values, and ethos but also engage their target audience—military personnel, veterans, first responders, and their families. This transformation was part of a larger initiative to realign Grunt Style’s content strategy, where the website was a key component.

Project Scope

As part of Skyrocket Digital's team, our role was to rebuild the American Grit website and transform it into a content-rich media platform that aligned with Grunt Style's values and goals. The project scope included:

• Building a new, engaging website that reflected the Grunt Style ethos.
• Implementing a robust filtering system to make content easy to navigate.
• Integrating the site with streaming platforms and YouTube Shorts for interactive media content.
• Migrating over 2,000 blog posts to the new platform.
• Providing a comprehensive digital strategy to support Grunt Style's broader vision beyond just the website, including content marketing and community engagement initiatives.

My Role

For this project I took on the role of front-end developer. My responsibilities included:

• Translating the design into a functional website, implementing the front-end development using Webflow.
• Developing a custom filtering system for organizing blog posts by categories and subcategories, ensuring users could easily navigate the content.
• Handling the integration of third-party tools, including a live streaming platform and YouTube Shorts to enhance multimedia engagement.
• Managing the migration of 2,000+ blog posts to the new platform, ensuring that the content was correctly categorized and displayed.

Unique Features

The revamped American Grit website featured several unique functionalities that were essential for transforming it into an engaging media platform:

• Advanced Filtering System: A user-friendly filtering system allowed visitors to search content by category and subcategory, enhancing navigation across the large volume of posts.
• Live Streaming Integration: A “Now Live” banner appeared on the site whenever Grunt Style was live-streaming, linking users to the stream directly within the site.
• YouTube Shorts Integration: An infinite scroll feature for mobile devices allowed users to browse YouTube Shorts content directly on the platform, creating a more interactive experience.

These features contributed to making the website a compelling hub for multimedia content, blending seamlessly with Grunt Style’s digital strategy.

Technology Stack

The Skyrocket Digital team employed the following technologies for the project:

• Webflow for website structure and design implementation.
• JavaScript and WebTricks for custom development and functionality.
• Finsweet Attributes for advanced filtering and navigation.
• HubSpot for CRM and marketing integration.

This stack allowed us to deliver a powerful, scalable, and easily navigable website that aligned with Grunt Style’s broader content goals.

Challenges

The main challenge was creating a complex filtering system that could efficiently categorize and display over 2,000 blog posts while maintaining a clean, user-friendly interface. We needed to ensure that users could easily filter content by categories and subcategories, with the filter chips dynamically reflecting their selections.

Additionally, integrating the infinite scrolling feature for YouTube Shorts was a technically challenging aspect, particularly optimizing it for mobile users to ensure a smooth experience.

Results/Impact

The revamped American Grit website was a massive success, both within Grunt Style and among its loyal community. The transformation turned the platform into a vibrant media property, driving significant increases in user engagement and contributing to Grunt Style’s mission of supporting the military community.

Beyond just increased traffic, the site became a vital part of Grunt Style’s storytelling and brand engagement, even driving new revenue streams through referral traffic. Ongoing agile development ensured the platform continued to evolve, solidifying its place in Grunt Style’s content ecosystem. you can see the full case study from Skyrocket here.

Post-launch Support

As part of Skyrocket Digital’s maintenance contract, we provided continuous support and updates post-launch. Once the maintenance period ended, we handed over the project with comprehensive documentation and conducted training to ensure Grunt Style’s team could manage the platform independently.

Final Thoughts

The American Grit transformation, led by Skyrocket Digital, was a powerful example of how thoughtful design, development, and strategy can turn a stagnant platform into a dynamic and valuable media property. By implementing unique features, we helped Grunt Style solidify its digital presence and reinforce its commitment to its community.

American Grit is now a vital part of Grunt Style’s digital strategy, continuing to engage its audience and drive brand value.