Earlier this month, Eric Wagstaff of Browns Shoes spoke with StitchDX’s Todd Felton on a live webinar about the success of their intranet project. The webinar, co-hosted by Powell and StitchDX, focused on how Browns Shoes went from scattered emails and disorganized files to a Modern Digital Workplace.
The result: an intranet that became the center of Browns’ company culture and reduced internal email by nearly 40%.
If you want to jump straight in, you can find the link to the full recording below. But if you want the short version of why this project worked when so many intranet projects don’t, read on.
See Powell in action
Browns Shoes went from no intranet at all to a digital workplace that reduced internal email by nearly 40% — built on Powell, integrated with Microsoft Teams, and still evolving two years later. Watch the webinar to see how they did it.
Buy-in isn’t enough if nobody’s using it
The executive team set the brief, stayed involved throughout the build, and became active users when it launched. Eric described executives using the people directory to prepare for their weekly “snack cart” — a tradition where leadership walks the office talking to people. The intranet became part of how they lead, not just something they told others to use. That distinction drove more adoption than any communications plan would have.
The relationship that made it work
Browns knew what they needed from the start and were looking for a vendor who could seamlessly integrate with Teams, provide information in French and English effortlessly, and provide a central platform for information. But what sealed the decision was the working relationship. As Eric put it: “We saw right away that StitchDX provided that agility. They listened and confirmed back in a way that showed they understood our reality.” By the end of the project he described StitchDX as having “almost become part of the Browns family” — weekly check-ins, a shared roadmap, and new features shipping well after go-live.
The intranet keeps getting better
SoleTrain 1.0 launched and Browns immediately started listening. Focus groups, surveys, the feedback button on the homepage. Most of what went into 2.0 — the people directory, the promotions section, the document hub redesign — wasn’t in the original brief. It came from paying attention after launch. “We listened even more,” Eric said, “and built features we hadn’t even thought of before.”
The full webinar is on our site. Eric walks their intranet, called “SoleTrain”, live — the homepage, the document hub, the people directory, all of it — and the Q&A at the end gets into some of the harder questions about adoption and partnership. If you’re thinking about an intranet or just what good digital workplace infrastructure looks like, it’s worth 30 minutes of your time.