Cove

Case Study

Preparing a New Sustainable Product for Market

As Cove prepared to introduce its biodegradable water bottle to consumers, I managed delivery of the digital experience that would establish its web presence, build brand awareness, and help explain the science and environmental proposition behind an unfamiliar new approach to packaging.

Cove was pursuing an ambitious objective: replacing conventional plastic water bottles with packaging made from PHA, a biodegradable material intended to offer a fundamentally different end-of-life path from traditional petroleum-based plastic. Our role centered on the website and its alignment with Cove's broader product-launch plans, giving the company a digital platform for communicating its product, science, environmental goals, and brand story as it prepared for market.

Leading the Project From Discovery to Launch

As Senior Project Manager, I planned and managed the engagement across its full delivery lifecycle. I was involved in discovery, requirements, scope, estimates, staffing, schedules, architecture discussions, production planning, design, development, QA, accessibility, deployment, and launch. I also worked directly with Cove stakeholders throughout the project, planning and leading presentations and regular check-ins while keeping decisions, priorities, and deliverables moving forward.

The delivery team was intentionally small. I coordinated a primary designer, additional client-side design resources responsible for maintaining alignment with the Cove brand, a lead developer, and our CTO. That structure made clear communication especially important. I needed to connect stakeholder expectations with design and technical realities while ensuring each discipline had the information and decisions required to keep progressing.

Turning Brand & Product Goals Into a Digital Plan

Cove led the scientific and environmental narrative, while my responsibility was to help turn that material into a viable digital experience. We organized the content around the product, the science behind its materials, Cove's environmental position, company information, and other information consumers would need to understand a product category that was still unfamiliar to most people.

Working with the client and internal team, I helped translate those requirements into the site structure, page needs, production plan, and development scope. We selected a custom WordPress implementation that gave Cove a manageable publishing platform while allowing the frontend to be built specifically around the brand and experience rather than constrained by an off-the-shelf theme.

Using Technical Fluency to Improve Delivery

My development background gave me the technical fluency to actively shape frontend delivery while leading the broader project. I worked closely with the developer to evaluate implementation approaches, anticipate development effort and risk, translate design intent into practical technical direction, and resolve challenges before they affected quality or schedule. When needed, I could move directly into the details, including providing targeted CSS or implementation guidance, then step back into the larger responsibility of keeping the team, stakeholders, and delivery plan aligned.

That technical fluency strengthened my role as a project leader. I could engage directly with implementation questions, help the team reach decisions faster, and connect frontend execution back to scope, schedule, quality, and the client's objectives without taking ownership away from the developer responsible for the build.

Building Discoverability Into Delivery

Search visibility was an important part of the work rather than a post-launch consideration. SEO requirements influenced how we approached site structure, content organization, metadata, page construction, performance, and implementation quality. We also used available data and reporting to inform decisions rather than treating every choice as purely subjective.

That focus mattered for a startup introducing both a new brand and a materials story that required explanation. The experience needed to work as a brand destination while also giving search engines clear, well-structured information about Cove, its product, and the sustainability concepts surrounding it.

Managing Quality & Production Readiness

My ownership continued through QA, accessibility, browser and device testing, remediation, deployment, production readiness, launch, and post-launch support. I reviewed the experience across both design and implementation, worked with the team to prioritize and resolve issues, and maintained communication with Cove stakeholders as we moved toward release.

This is where my combination of project management and technical experience was particularly useful. I could move between stakeholder conversations, design reviews, implementation details, QA findings, and launch planning without treating them as isolated workstreams. The objective was to keep the entire delivery connected and get a high-quality product into production.

From Pre-Launch to Market

Cove's path from concept to commercial production extended well beyond the original product timeline as the company worked through the materials and manufacturing challenges involved in producing a biodegradable bottle at scale. During that journey, Cove received Dieline's 2019 Plastic Free Innovation of the Year recognition, bringing industry attention to the potential of its approach.

The scale of the company's ambition continued to grow. In 2021, Cove announced a five-year agreement for more than 350 million pounds of PHA, intended to support production at the scale of hundreds of millions of bottles. By 2022, reporting put the company's funding since 2018 at approximately $20 million. Cove ultimately reached consumers in December 2022 through Erewhon stores across Los Angeles and online.

Our digital work took place earlier in that journey. I led delivery of the web experience as Cove prepared for market, helping establish the digital foundation through which the company could introduce its brand, communicate a complex environmental proposition, build search visibility, and support its progression toward a commercial product launch.

Project Management With Technical Depth

Cove represents an important progression in my career because my role was formally centered on senior project management while still benefiting from years spent building digital products myself. I could lead stakeholder relationships, scope and plan the work, manage resources and schedules, guide presentations, coordinate design and development, and own QA and launch while also understanding what was happening beneath the interface.

That combination allowed me to connect client objectives, project realities, creative intent, and technical execution. Rather than managing those disciplines from a distance, I could help the people responsible for each one make informed decisions, remove obstacles when they appeared, and keep the project moving toward a successful delivery.