Bath & Body Works
When Bath & Body Works stepped out of L Brands as its own public company, bbwinc.com had to grow up with it: a corporate home for investors, media, associates and customers, organised around People, Product and Planet and launched alongside the company's first ESG report.
Overview
A corporate site that finally matched the brand behind it.
bbwinc.com is the first place investors, ESG raters and rankers, NGOs, media, consumers and job seekers go to learn about Bath & Body Works. A 2022 benchmark against peer CPG and retail companies found the legacy site lacklustre: corporate in tone, thin on storytelling and disconnected from the retail brand people already loved.
The corporate communications team, which publishes the company's news and press releases, briefed a redesign for spring 2023, timed to the enhanced proxy statement and the launch of the first ESG report. The site had to land a new identity: an independent company with a purpose, told through People, Product and Planet.
With Fahlgren Mortine I led UX architecture and design from stakeholder discovery through sitemap, wireframes and detail design. The same architecture carried the Media Room rebuild in 2025 and the full brand reskin in 2026, when the design system moved from Sketch to Figma.
Our objectives
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01.Build trust and positively impact the company's reputation with every audience the site serves.
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02.Convey the company's values, what it does, how it does it and why that matters, through compelling stories about the business and its people.
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03.Provide critical, factual information to key stakeholders: SEC filings, press releases, governance materials and ESG data, live from the source.
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04.Design a highly functional, flexible site that is easy to navigate, responsive and WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.
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05.Give the communications team a CMS-driven platform with the flexibility to evolve and grow with the business.
People. Product. Planet.
A home page that leads with purpose
A full-width film under "The Power of Fragrance", the values statement "Doing the right thing is our thing", news filterable by People, Product, Planet and Finance, a Making an Impact module that switches between the three pillars, a live NYSE ticker and a careers strip for stores, distribution centres and the home office.
Navigation for six audiences
Seven top-level sections, each with a mega-menu that pairs a one-line story with its sub-pages and a contact CTA. A utility bar links back to the retail site, customer care and careers so the corporate site never has to be everything. The mobile drawer mirrors the same hierarchy.
People
Culture, diversity and equity, Gingham Gives Back and volunteerism, told through associates rather than stock photography. A CEO quote, a fast-facts carousel, the Foundation and partnership touts and an "Investing in You" careers block give the section its own rhythm.
Planet
Brighter Places: climate change and carbon emissions, energy efficiency, sustainable sourcing and affiliations, with a Performance With Purpose module linking to the detail pages and a persistent tout for the ESG report.
An evergreen home for ESG
The ESG hub holds the report, ESG news and awards, and the policies that rarely change: ESG, supplier and governance. Putting the durable content on the site lets each annual report focus on what happened that year.
Investors, fed live
Financial reporting, stock performance, governance and the shareholder centre share one sub-navigation. Releases, SEC filings and quarterly results arrive through the GlobeNewswire integration, so the team publishes once and the site stays current.
Discovery
Benchmarks, stakeholders and a sitemap built for six audiences
The engagement kicked off in September 2022 with a project team meeting weekly, a stakeholder team every two weeks and critical partners on demand: external communications, investor relations, legal, IT, ESG, DE&I, corporate philanthropy, HR and creative.
We patterned the site against Nestlé, P&G, Apple, L'Oréal and Ulta using the Vertic index: intuitive navigation, intelligent search, circular flow, storytelling and decision-journey fulfilment. Stakeholder feedback was consistent: prioritise storytelling, be less corporate and more transparent, show more people, add an ESG section and a blog, and link back to the retail site.
The sitemap organised everything under About, People, Product, Planet, Investors, Media and Careers. Wireframes then locked the page structure and component kit before a single colour was chosen.
Last year, we complemented our first ESG report with a complete overhaul of our bbwinc.com corporate site. We started to populate the site with information on ESG that we believe won't substantially change year-over-year. This allows our ESG report to really focus on what happened and what we accomplished over the past year.— Jeff King, Group Vice President, Head of ESG, Bath & Body Works 2023 ESG Report
Media Room · 2025
Everything you need to tell our story
The Media Room is the corporate communications team's front door to the press, and the part of the site that drives brand awareness with the media. Two years after launch it was rebuilt around how journalists actually use it.
A featured-news carousel sits under the header, one search covers releases and stories, and every card is tagged People, Product, Planet or Financial so the newsroom filters the same way the home page does. Story detail pages gained image galleries with downloads, and Media Assets became a browsable library of logos, product, store and leadership imagery with folders and usage terms.
Brand reskin · 2026
Same structure, evolved expression
In early 2026 Bath & Body Works updated its logo and colour system, and the corporate site followed. The brief was explicit: not a redesign. The structure, navigation and functional patterns had proven themselves, so the work was to evolve the visual expression until the site looked like the brand as it exists today.
Typography moved from Source Sans to Helvetica Neue. The palette consolidated on blue: Ambergris, Starflower Blue and Coconut White, with Indigo Slate and Soft Silver added where pairings needed WCAG contrast. The gingham was simplified to the brand blues and the pink retired from the interface.
We used the moment to move the design system from Sketch into Figma: colour and type variables, component sets for headers, navigation, cards, carousels and content modules, page templates for every type, and a component key for the developers.
The impact
One architecture, three pillars, four years of evolution
The site launched in spring 2023 alongside the first ESG report and the enhanced proxy statement, and has been the company's evergreen home for ESG, investor and news content since. The architecture held through the 2025 Media Room rebuild and the 2026 reskin without a page being re-planned, which is the outcome the original brief asked for: a site with the flexibility to evolve and grow with the business.
Audiences served
Investors, media, raters and rankers, NGOs, consumers, and associates and job seekers.
Annual visits at kickoff
With 69,000+ document downloads a year and a 55/45 desktop-to-mobile split, from the 2022 analytics baseline.
Page templates designed
Desktop and mobile, from the home page to SEC filings, board committees and media folders.
Of continuous evolution
Launch in 2023, the Media Room in 2025, the brand reskin and the move to Figma in 2026.