Soldier steps up

The fast-growing Cambridge firm demonstrates that the real action's in branding and design

''We come from youth culture, and what that means is a certain vivacious, entrepreneurial spirit,'' says Bobby Riley, creative director/CEO of Soldier Design. (Globe Staff Photo / Essdras M. Suarez)

Bobby Riley is standing in the middle of his sure-to-be swank new office space at 18 Brattle St., a plum spot in Harvard Square above Tess and across the street from The Tannery.

It's still all studs and wires and plywood, so Riley explains what it will look like after the construction's done.

"We're going to have a mini-photo studio, a mini-kitchen, a wooden patio out back," says Riley, dressed in all black except for lavender socks. There are also open studio-style work stations for his nine designers, illustrators, architects, and strategists, and a 300-square-foot conference room that will look down, through halo-lit windows, onto the bustling street.

Riley, 33, is unassuming and maybe even a little bit shy, so he shrugs when asked if this is a pivotal moment for Soldier Design, the branding firm he opened in Cambridgeport in 2004. It's not his style to gloat. But with a client list of mostly action sports companies that has started to take off in the last year, Soldier Design plans to expand its staff by five for its new digs, which open next month. And the company is positioned to take a more aggressive and high-profile role in Boston's branding and design landscape.

"I think there's a tipping point that happens, and has happened to us in this last year," says Dan Vogelzang, Soldier's director of operations, and Riley's collaborator from when the firm was still operating out of his Cambridge apartment in the early 2000s. "We've been adding some much bigger accounts lately. It's almost like now, we can really let loose."

Not that letting loose was something they weren't already familiar with. Because the nature of what Soldier does - which involves everything from conjuring a company's identity to executing the results through websites, advertising, and in retail stores - is all about staying on the so-called cutting edge. They create extravagant trade show booths, throw parties for their clients, and have even designed limited-edition beer and exclusive, limited-edition shoes.

That kind of stylish design is required, because if the message isn't new and creative and authentic - and if the target customers don't somehow feel special for having taken notice - it won't fly.

"The people who participate in action sports - in snowboarding, in skateboarding - they can see through any marketing smokescreen of people who don't get it. They'll know," says Reid Sterrett, a brand manager for R.E.D. protective snowboard helmets, a division of industry gear leader Burton. "You can do much more damage to a brand if you don't get it right. It's got to be cutting edge. It has to be in tune with fashion trends. And it has to be very current."

One example is what Riley called the "Love Project." Helly Hansen, the Norwegian-based outdoor outfitting giant, asked Soldier to create a campaign that involved exclusive, limited-edition gifts that only 500 hand-chosen people could get, but that everyone would want.

Riley sought out emerging street artists from Brookline to Portland to design various items - a cap, a hoodie, a T-shirt stuffed inside a hollow Krylon spray can - and then made Helly Hansen credit cards with a code on them, and instructions to log onto a website. "The cool people would get these cards," says Russ Rowan, vice president of sales and marketing at Helly Hansen. "We sent it out with this 'Love Form,' explaining what it was."

The cards went out to action sports celebrities, plus some folks from Formula 1, the NBA, and trendsetters in Hollywood. "If you get 500 of the most unique people and they're wearing that hat and talking about it, everyone wants that hat," says Rowan. "And it was so cool, that people were calling and saying, 'Where do I get The Love?' "

The campaign, says Rowan, thrilled Helly Hansen higher-ups because people were buzzing about the company, and it also satisfied the core customer base. "You've got to get people talking about your brand. That's just the way it is, and it's very challenging to do that. There are not that many people who can think that way, who can act that quickly, and [Riley] is one of them."

The push now, says Riley, is to take those methods, and transfer them to other industries - as long as those industries understand what Soldier's about. "We come from youth culture, and what that means is a certain vivacious, entrepreneurial spirit. We'll only work with companies with that spirit," he says. "We describe it as cult to classic."

Some of those clients include retail stores (The Achilles Project in Boston), apparel companies (Newton-based Clarks footwear), even law firms (they have Exemplar Law Partners in Boston).

Riley grew up the youngest of six in Peabody, and went to Salem State for a business degree, where he met his now-wife, Sabrina. Married six years, they have a 6-month-old son, Maddox, and are building, in Cambridge, their first home.

On the short side and fit - he's a serious snowboarder and surfer - Riley has an almost-shaved head and black-rimmed glasses. Style has always been important to him. His family laughs even today about how he used to obsessively rearrange furniture in the house to make it look better, says his mother, Joanne. Sabrina says he's the same way at home. He did the baby's nursery entirely in chalkboard paint, then went out and bought a bunch of fabric Marimekko prints, stretched them over wooden frames, and covered the walls with them.

"With anything, he has this eye," she says.

It's that eye that got him noticed in the first place. He was working at Ski Market in Boston - again, rearranging the store - when Tarek Hassan, owner of The Tannery, noticed him and asked if he'd create and run a snowboard and skate shop within his store. Riley was 19 at the time.

They called it Concepts, and today, it's a free-standing shop on Brattle Street that Riley just redesigned for Hassan - complete with a selection of high-end "street couture" including $500 to $1,000 footwear and a VIP hangout lounge (Kevin Garnett is a member) in the basement.

"Come on, I've got to show you the basement. It's pretty dope," Riley says one afternoon, moving through the sleek, minimalist designs on the upper floor of Concepts to the back and down a flight of stairs where a massive original Futura 2000 painting hangs. (Riley commissioned it.)

Below, it's a men's den. Cool and darkish with a row of flame against the wall, the long narrow room has sets of expensive brown leather chairs on one side. On the other side are lockers for every member, with a bottle of champagne waiting inside each one. A huge plasma TV hangs on the wall on one end, and there's a fully stocked bar on the other.

All of this is Riley's idea - again, to create that sense of something special, and exclusive. "This is the next level of retail," he says, cracking open a Red Bull he snagged from the fridge. "This is how you bring it back to service."