Zero Digital Presence
No website, no domain content, no way for an entrant or sponsor to find the show, see the field, or register online.
Case File No. 05
UI/UX & Product Case Study
Wheaton Concours
Charity Exotic Car Show — Wheaton, IL
Designed and shipped the full registration, sponsorship, and payment platform for a first-year charity car show — from a blank domain to a live site with Stripe checkout in two weeks, solo.
Duration2 Weeks
RoleProduct Designer & Developer (Solo)
StackFigma · VS Code · SQL
No. 01The Project
Project Overview
Wheaton Concours is a first-year, exotic-forward charity car show at Memorial Park in Wheaton, IL — presented with the Wheaton Police Department and benefiting Special Olympics Illinois. Supercars, classics, American muscle, and one-off builds shared the field on August 22, 2026.
The organizers came in with a date, a park, and a cause — but no website, no way to take registrations or payments, and no sponsor pipeline. Everything else — brand direction, information architecture, pricing structure, registration flow, and the live build — was scoped and shipped end to end.
Tech Inspection✓ Passed
TypeEvent & Registration Platform
LocationWheaton, IL
Duration2 Weeks
RoleProduct Designer & Developer (Solo)
ToolsFigma · VS Code · Claude Code (AI-assisted build) · Hostinger · SQL · Stripe
DeliverablesBrand Direction · Registration Flow · Sponsor Tiers · Live Site
The Challenge
A first-year charity car show had a date, a park, and a cause — but no website, no way to take registrations or payments, and no sponsor pipeline. Comparable shows still ran on mail-in forms and checks.
The Solution
A registration and sponsorship platform: published sponsor tiers, a car class showcase, a show-day countdown, and Stripe checkout that only confirms an entry once the payment webhook clears.
The Execution
Designed and built solo, from a blank domain to a live site in two weeks — with 9+ sponsor brands confirmed and the Wheaton Police Department partnership in place before show day.
Who It Was Built With
Entry fees and sponsorships benefit SOILL. Their athletes vote on and present a trophy of their own on the field — a detail that shaped how the awards were structured and surfaced on the site.
The department co-presents the show and judges the Police Choice trophy. Working with a municipal partner set the credibility bar the brand direction and copy had to clear.
The project came to me through The Hamilton Collection, who came aboard at the top Diamond tier and lend their name to the Hamilton Award.
Desktop — wheatonconcours.com homepage
Mobile — responsive layout
No. 02The Challenge
A Show With No Front Door
Local charity car shows like this one traditionally run on paper: a mail-in registration form, a check made out to a foundation, and a phone call to lock in a sponsorship. Wheaton Concours needed to launch fast, look credible to sponsors writing four-figure checks, and process real money — without any of that manual overhead.
Paper-Based Precedent
Comparable local shows still run on mail-in forms and checks postmarked by a deadline — slow, error-prone, and invisible until the show.
Unresolved Pricing & Payments
Entry fees, sponsor tiers, and Stripe processing costs all had to be worked out together — before a single dollar could be collected.
| Dimension | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Entry registration | Mail-in form + check, postmarked by deadline | Instant online registration + Stripe checkout |
| Payment confirmation | Manual — wait for mail, cash the check | Automated webhook flips status to paid, confirmation email sent |
| Sponsorship | Phone calls, ad hoc pricing | Three published tiers with clear pricing & perks |
| Brand presence | None | Live site, countdown timer, calendar integration, sponsor wall |
No. 03Who We Designed For
Three Groups, Three Needs
The site had to work for the people running the show, the people driving onto the field, and the local businesses paying to be seen — each with a different relationship to risk, time, and money.
| Stakeholder / User | Core Friction | Design Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Event OrganizerDecision-maker | Needed pricing locked fast while coordinating the police department, the charity, and permits — and a site to point sponsors to immediately. | Fee-modeled pricing recommendations, published sponsor tiers, and a live site within two weeks. |
| Car Owner / EntrantShow-day participant | A mail-in form with an uncertain postmark deadline felt risky and slow; entrants wanted to know their class and get confirmation after paying. | Online registration with class selection, Stripe checkout, and a confirmation email once payment clears. |
| Local Business SponsorGold / Platinum / Diamond | Phone-only booking with no published pricing looked unprofessional and made a four-figure spend hard to justify internally. | Three published tiers — Gold $500, Platinum $1,500, Diamond $3,000 — with perks visible before anyone picks up the phone. |
No. 04How We Got There
Two Weeks, In Order
1
Stakeholder Alignment
Prepared a structured 9-topic meeting agenda and front-loaded the two questions that could block everything else: sponsorship pricing and permits.
Discovery
2
Pricing & Payments
Modeled Stripe fees across ticket and sponsor price points to recommend numbers that held up once processing costs were real.
Strategy
3
Flow Architecture
Designed the registration pipeline: form submit → pending row in a SQL database → Stripe checkout → webhook → confirmation email.
UX + Systems
4
Visual Identity
Landed on a dark, racing-red muscle aesthetic with Bebas Neue display type — built to feel like the field it's promoting.
Design
5
Build & Ship
Built the live site — hero, countdown, car classes, sponsor tiers, community section — and wired up registration end to end.
Development
Items 3 and 9 on the stakeholder agenda — sponsorship pricing and permits/insurance — were flagged up front as the two that could block everything downstream. Resolving them first kept the other seven topics from stalling the build.
Iteration
No. 05Key Design Features
What Was Built
Two-Tier Entry System
$20 pre-sale (capped at 150 cars, closing Aug 16) versus $30 at the gate — with the price gap doing the work of driving early registration.
Decision: keep pre-sale at $20 net of fees rather than passing the Stripe fee to entrants. The fee model was based on 500 total cars.
Three-Tier Sponsorship
Gold ($500), Platinum ($1,500, most popular), and Diamond ($3,000, headline) — each with escalating perks from a single field entry to main-lawn placement and DJ shoutouts.
Decision: publish pricing openly instead of "call for a quote," so a sponsor can self-qualify before ever picking up the phone.
Car Class Showcase
Supercars, Classics, American Muscle, and Other — presented as large hover tiles that link straight into registration, so browsing turns into intent.
Decision: curated categories over a long checklist of 15+ classes, matching the "curated, not crowded" positioning of the show.
Countdown & Calendar Integration
A live countdown to show day, one-tap Google Calendar add, and a map link straight to Memorial Park — built to convert casual visits into calendar commitments.
Decision: surface the countdown above the fold on both desktop and mobile, since urgency was the strongest lever for a pre-sale with a hard cap.
Entry tiers — presale vs. sponsorship
Car class showcase
Registration & Payment Flow
From form submit to confirmed entry
Designed to fail safely: nothing is marked "paid" until Stripe's webhook confirms it, so a dropped connection never produces a false confirmation.
Owner Submits Form
Car details + class
→
Row Saved to Database
Status: pending
→
Stripe Checkout
$20 / $30 per car
→
Webhook Fires
Status → paid
→
Confirmation Email
Entrant notified
No. 06Visual Identity
Design System & Branding
Logo & Mark
WHEATON
Concours
Color Palette
Background#0A0A0A
Surface#141414
Racing Red#C8102E
Deep Red#8A0A1F
Primary Text#F2F0EC
Typography
WHEATON CONCOURS
BECOME A SPONSOR
Curated, not crowded — every car on the lawn is one you want to walk over to.
Components
Platinum
$1,500
Main lawn + 2 VIP passes
18
Days
23
Hrs
25
Min
Sponsor tier cards — Gold, Platinum, Diamond
No. 07Where It Landed
Show Day Results
Wheaton Concours took place on August 22, 2026 at Memorial Park. Here's how the platform performed.
2
Weeks, Design to Launch
9+
Sponsor Brands on the Roster
150
Pre-Sale Spots Offered
- ✓ Site went live at wheatonconcours.com with registration and Stripe checkout working end to end
- ✓ Sponsor roster included Cannonball Garage, The Hamilton Collection, Cambier Capital, Chicago Motorcars, Strada Motorsports, Dempsey Kustoms, 5 Stitches, and Capture Company
- ✓ Official partnership with the Wheaton Police Department, benefiting Special Olympics Illinois
- ✓ Three sponsor tiers published with self-serve visibility into pricing and perks — no more phone-only booking
No. 08Reflection
What I Learned
01
Front-Load the Blockers
Structuring the stakeholder agenda around what could actually stall launch — pricing, permits — instead of going topic-by-topic in order, kept a 30-minute meeting from turning into three.
02
Price With the Fees Visible
Modeling Stripe's cut at every price point before recommending numbers turned a guessing game into a decision the organizer could sign off on with confidence.
03
Design for What You Can't Control
A permit that isn't pulled yet or an insurance question still open doesn't stop good design work — it just means building the parts that don't depend on the answer first.