SITE ARCHITECTURE PLAN

How UNRL is actually built, and how we build ours on the same theme.

Pipeline is purchased. Before we touch Shopify Admin, this is the navigation, mega-menu, and product-page architecture UNRL runs in production on that exact theme — pulled from their live site, not guessed — mapped onto what Compound actually sells. Everything below is real: real nav links, real filter facets, real PDP copy, captured off unrl.com today.

THEME PIPELINE — PURCHASED REFERENCE UNRL.COM — LIVE CAPTURED 19 SEP 2026 FOR RETAIL.CMPSPORTSWEAR.COM

Where this picks up

Fast recap so this page stands on its own.

LOCKED

Theme & direction

Pipeline is bought — the same theme UNRL's live site runs on (confirmed twice: schema_name: "Pipeline", theme store id 739, checked again today). Design direction from the reference board holds: gritty tone, real photography only, four distinct department moods rather than one blended look.

DONE

Catalog audit

All 312 products checked. 100% missing SEO fields, 79% untagged, vendor field spelled 4 ways, real option-name typos, 13 products oversold. The 13 oversold items are already fixed live (inventory corrected via the Shopify Admin API, verified). The rest of the cleanup — categories, tags, vendor standardization — is scoped and approved to start (Phase 1 of the rebuild plan), independent of the theme work below.

CORRECTED

What we actually sell

Two rounds of concept mockups got this wrong before landing right: Compound retail is general athleticwear first — graphic tees, embroidered fleece, joggers — not a wrestling-competition-gear storefront. Sublimated fight shorts and singlets are one department inside that (training/semi-intense mood), licensed/PNL apparel is another (gameday mood), Wrstlg Dept is a third (streetwear, off-the-mat mood). This page's nav mapping is built on that corrected structure.

CONFIRMED — CLIFF, 19 SEP

Nav mapping & hub naming

Wrstlg Dept keeps peer-department billing next to Men/Women. The partnerships hub is named Collabs — Stilly Boys, Elite 8, PNL, and licensed college apparel all live under it, same shape as UNRL's University Collection sitting inside Collaborations. Team & School Orders in the footer is a traffic-driver link pointing off-site to the teamwear/Chipply store business, not a product category the retail site sells directly. Deals is overflow/clearance stock. Details on each below.

UNRL's real navigation and site flow

Pulled directly off unrl.com's live DOM today — every link below is real, not inferred from a screenshot. This is what "the UNRL theme" actually means in practice.

UNRL homepage, full-bleed hero with headline and dual CTA
HOMEPAGE — LIVE, 19 SEP 2026
UNRL product page with 18 real photo colorway swatches and a fit scale
PRODUCT PAGE — LIVE, 19 SEP 2026

The top nav is nine slots: two merchandising shortcuts (New, Best Sellers), three peer departments (Men, Women, Golf), one flat link (Kids — no dropdown), one partnerships hub (Collaborations), one rotating featured drop (currently their NFL capsule), and Last Call in accent red. Every department mega-menu follows the identical column pattern:

NAV ITEM
MEGA-MENU COLUMNS (real, as shipped)
MENpeer department
FEATURED: Last Call, New Arrivals, Best Sellers, Gift Card TOPS: Short/Long Sleeve, Polos, Quarter Zips, Sweatshirts, Full Zips & Jackets, Vests, Outerwear BOTTOMS: Shorts, Pants & Joggers, Sweatpants ACCESSORIES: Headwear, Socks, Bags, Bucket Hats, Beanies + promo tile: bundle deal
WOMENpeer department
FEATURED: New Arrivals, Best Sellers, Matching Sets, + 2 named capsules (LuxBreak, Performa) TOPS: Short Sleeve, Sweatshirts, Half-Zips, Tanks, Sports Bras, Jackets, Polos, Vests BOTTOMS: Leggings, Joggers, Shorts, Skorts ACCESSORIES: Headwear, Bags + promo tile: bundle deal
GOLFpeer department
FEATURED: named hero product page, Casual Golf capsule TOPS · BOTTOMS · ACCESSORIES (mirrors Men/Women pattern) + its own WOMEN'S GOLF sub-block nested inside
KIDSflat link, no menu
/collections/youth — that's it, no dropdown
COLLABORATIONSpartnerships hub
Featured hero: current flagship drop University Collection ~17 named league/team/cause partnerships (NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, F1, Special Olympics, Folds of Honor, etc.) Lookbook link
Footer utility linksnot in main nav
Group Orders Wholesale Legacy Rewards (loyalty) Give $15, Get $15 (referral) Retail Locator Behind the Brand / Athletes / Careers Military & First Responder Discount
The single most useful structural fact on this whole page: UNRL doesn't put its bulk/team ordering business in the main nav at all. "Group Orders" and "Wholesale" are footer links, one click deep. The main nav stays 100% retail-shopping-focused. That directly answers a question we've been going back and forth on since the reference-board work — we don't need a Represent-style split hero fighting retail against team/school ordering. UNRL proves you don't need to compromise the retail homepage to also run a bulk-order channel.

Mobile: hamburger opens a full-screen drawer — search bar first, then the same top-level items each with a chevron for drill-down, Last Call still in accent color. Homepage: full-bleed hero (photo, oversized headline low-left, two CTAs — this is exactly the skeleton the reference board already locked in from Pas Normal), then a pill-tab row (Men / Women / Golf / Kids) that filters a product carousel right on the homepage without a page load. Announcement bar: a live free-shipping progress bar, not just static text.

Mapping UNRL's architecture onto Compound

Same skeleton, our departments. This is the actual information architecture I'd build in Pipeline's navigation settings.

UNRL HAS
COMPOUND GETS
SHORTCUT
New / Best Sellers
→
New Arrivals / Best Sellers
Same pattern, cross-department. Currently missing from the live nav — add both.
PEER DEPARTMENT
Men / Women
→
Men / Women
General retail: Tees & Shirts, Fleece, Bottoms, Outerwear — mirrors the Tops/Bottoms/Accessories column pattern exactly. This is the bulk of our real catalog.
PEER DEPARTMENT
Golf
→
Wrstlg Dept
Golf earns its own top-nav slot on UNRL because it's a distinct identity, not because it's a big category. Wrstlg Dept is our version — its own streetwear/off-mat mood needs the same peer-level billing, not a buried sub-link.
FLAT LINK
Kids
→
Youth
Keep it flat, no mega-menu — matches UNRL and matches how small our youth assortment actually is today.
PARTNERSHIPS HUB
Collaborations
→
Collabs
Name's confirmed. This is where PNL, Stilly Boys, Elite 8, and licensed college apparel all live — UNRL's "University Collection" sitting inside Collaborations, next to their NFL/NHL/NBA deals, is the exact same shape. One hub, not four separate fights for main-nav space. See the college-apparel callout below — it's the biggest single thing living in this hub by SKU count, even though it's one nav click among several.
FOOTER UTILITY
Group Orders / Wholesale
→
Team & School Orders
Not a product category on the retail site — this is a one-click-deep footer link whose whole job is to send coaches/programs off to our teamwear/Chipply store business. Retail never sells team-sublimated uniforms directly; this link exists purely to catch that traffic and route it to the right side of the business.
ACCENT LINK
Last Call
→
Deals
Overflow and clearance stock — discontinued colorways, end-of-run sizes, closeouts. Keep the accent color treatment; it's doing real work signaling urgency distinctly from the rest of the nav.
NOT YET USED
Legacy Rewards / Referral
→
Open decision
UNRL runs a loyalty program and a "Give $15, Get $15" referral link in the footer. We don't have either yet. Worth a real decision, not a default — flagged in Phase 4 below rather than assumed.
College apparel is a significant, not incidental, part of this catalog. Virginia Tech, Northern Iowa, Nebraska, Purdue, and a handful of other licensed schools are going to make up a real portion of the retail assortment — not a side capsule. Production-side, it's print-on-demand: garments get printed per order rather than held as pre-decorated stock. Customer-facing, none of that surfaces — no "print on demand," "made to order," or similar language anywhere in PDP copy, collection descriptions, or metafields. It has to read exactly like every other in-stock item on the site. Two things this changes downstream: (1) Phase 1's catalog cleanup needs a POD flag that's internal-only (fulfillment routing, not a customer-visible tag or badge), and (2) inside the Collabs hub, college needs real merchandising weight — its own prominent block, not a single link buried among Stilly Boys and Elite 8 — since it'll likely carry more SKUs and more volume than the other three combined.

The product page, top to bottom

This is the exact stack Cliff called out as "bad fucking ass" on the reference board — laid out here in full, in order, from the live page. Green badges are things Pipeline ships natively; red badges need an app decision.

NATIVE TO PIPELINE — no extra tooling NEEDS AN APP — a real decision to make
01

Image gallery NATIVE

9 images on the hoodie we checked, zoom-enabled. Pipeline's media gallery handles this out of the box — this is a photography-supply problem, not a build problem. Ties straight back to the catalog audit: 73 of our 312 products have no featured image at all today.

02

Color swatches as real photo crops NATIVE

18 colorways on one style, and every swatch is a cropped photo of the actual garment in that color — not a flat color dot. Pipeline's variant picker supports this directly off variant images. Needs the shot list to include one image per colorway at minimum, which is the same "one shooting standard, enforced" rule the earlier Grid pattern already established.

03

Size picker + Find My Size APP

Standard size buttons, a "Find My Size" quiz trigger, a Size Guide link, and a visual fit-scale bar (Compression → Slim → True → Relaxed → Oversized) with a marker showing where this exact style sits. The buttons and size guide are native Pipeline. The quiz is a sizing app (Kiwi Sizing, Fit Finder, or similar) — a real subscription decision, not a default.

04

Shipping urgency countdown APP

"Order within 1h 15m to receive as soon as Tuesday" — a live countdown tied to real shipping cutoffs. Cheap conversion lever, needs a small app or a custom Liquid snippet keyed to carrier cutoff times.

05

Description + Specs / Wash accordions NATIVE

A short description paragraph, then two collapsed accordions (Specs, Wash Instructions). Standard Pipeline product template content — this is a copywriting task against our metafield standard from the catalog audit, not a build task.

06

Mid-page conviction line NATIVE

"THE HOODIE WE CAN'T KEEP IN STOCK." set big, on its own, between the fold and the feature bullets. Pure copywriting + a content section — no app needed.

07

Feature bullets NATIVE

Three short technical claims (fabric, hood construction, pockets) as a simple bulleted block. This is the metafield-driven "spec list" pattern from the catalog-rebuild spec, presented as PDP content rather than buried in a description field.

08

Shop-the-look / complete-the-fit APP

The hoodie is shown paired with its matching short as a 2-up "wear it together" block. This is a product-relationship feature — either a metafield reference we maintain manually per style, or a cross-sell app. Directly useful for us: Momentum jacket + jogger is the exact same pairing opportunity we already have in the catalog.

09

Related colorways / complete-the-collection carousel NATIVE

Same style shown in five other colors plus the matching short, with live sale pricing on one. Native Pipeline "related products" section driven off collection or tag rules — no app needed once tagging is clean.

10

Rich reviews with fit & use-case data APP

2,328 reviews, a star histogram, a crowd-sourced "fits slim / fits looser" poll, a size-purchased breakdown, and a tag cloud of what customers use the product for (Training, Casual Wear, Travel, Golf...). This is a real reviews platform — Judge.me, Yotpo, or Okendo — not a Pipeline default. The "recommend this for" tag cloud is genuinely useful merchandising data and doubles as free customer research once it's live.

Collection pages & the homepage carousel

Also pulled live off the DOM — real Pipeline component and class names, confirming these are stock theme behaviors we get for free once the catalog data backs them.

CONFIRMED NATIVE

Filter facets

The real sidebar filter groups on a live collection page, in order: Gender, Size, Product Type, Product Colorway, Price, Availability. This is Pipeline's native filter system reading real product data — every one of these facets needs its source field clean and consistent, which is exactly the option-name and category work already scoped in Phase 1 of the catalog rebuild.

CONFIRMED NATIVE

Per-variant grid image

Product cards use a real Pipeline component (<product-grid-item-variant>) that swaps the card image to match whichever colorway is active — the card shows the price and color name of whatever's selected, not just a static default photo. Depends on every variant having its own image, which again comes back to photography completeness in the catalog.

HOMEPAGE PATTERN

Tabbed department carousel

Below the hero, a pill-tab row (Men / Women / Golf / Kids) swaps a horizontal product carousel in place without a page load. This is a stronger homepage merchandising pattern than the static "New Arrivals" grid in the current concept mockup — worth building into the next mockup revision. Maps to our departments as Men / Women / Wrstlg Dept / Youth.

The build plan, sequenced

Same phase numbering as the original audit, extended with the theme work this research unlocks.

PHASE 1Approved, in progress

Catalog cleanup

Vendor field, option names, categories, tags, dead-stock and sample-product cleanup. The 13 oversold items are already fixed. Adds one new item this round: an internal-only POD fulfillment flag for the licensed-college SKUs, kept out of every customer-facing field. This has to land before the filter facets and per-variant grid images above will work correctly.

PHASE 2Approved, parallel track

Marketing plumbing

Meta/TikTok pixels, UTM discipline through the Link & QR Studio, the Chipply-to-Mailchimp merge. Doesn't touch the theme at all — keeps running alongside everything below.

PHASE 3Starts now

Pipeline setup & navigation

Install Pipeline on a staging/unpublished theme. Build the nav structure from the mapping table above: Men / Women / Wrstlg Dept / Youth / Collabs / Deals, with Team & School Orders moved to the footer. Configure the mega-menu columns and the New/Best Sellers shortcuts, and give the Collabs hub a merchandising layout that weights college apparel as its largest block.

PHASE 4Needs decisions below

App decisions & PDP build

Choose the reviews platform, the size-finder app (or skip it for now), and whether to build a loyalty/referral program. Build the PDP template against the 10-part anatomy above, in the four department moods already locked (general retail, training/semi-intense, gameday, streetwear) — college-licensed PDPs read identically to every other product page, with the POD flag from Phase 1 driving fulfillment only, never copy.

PHASE 5Launch

Redirects & remeasure

Full 301 redirect map before publishing — still the single highest-risk step in a rebuild. Remeasure against the baseline from the audit: ~90 sessions/day, 0.39% conversion.