Author’s Bio:
Michael Petry is the creative director and partner of Golden West Boots, the premium Western footwear brand he launched with Grammy-winning country music star Lainey Wilson. Michael is one of the world’s most recognized and influential brand and cultural leaders, with decades of design expertise spanning roles at Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Prada, Frye, and Tumi. He brings deep industry knowledge and curiosity to creating authentic products for his target customers.
When country music superstar Lainey Wilson wanted to launch a boot brand, she knew exactly who to call. I’d spent years designing iconic footwear at Adidas, Ralph Lauren, and Prada, but what made this partnership click wasn’t just my technical expertise—it was my willingness to completely transform my life to understand her audience.
Today, if you walked into my house, you’d hear country music playing 24/7. You’d see me dressed head to toe in Western wear. You’d catch me scrolling through Ford F-150 listings and planning my next rodeo trip. This isn’t marketing theater or a costume I put on for work; it’s how I design authentic products that resonate deeply with customers.
Ahead, I’ll break down the strategy you can use to understand your customers on a deeper level.
Most entrepreneurs study their target audience from a distance, analyzing demographics, running focus groups, poring over customer data. That approach will get you partway there. If you want to create genuine products that customers immediately recognize as made for them, you need to do something most people would never consider. You need to actually become your customer.
Embodying your customer’s lifestyle
The concept sounds extreme, but it works. When we launched Golden West Boots with Lainey, we stood the brand up in just 12 weeks—a fraction of the typical 12- to 18-month footwear calendar. In that compressed time frame, we created what I genuinely believe is the best boot in the marketplace with our Somewhere Over Laredo style. It’s the best not only because of its price/value relationship, but also because I took the time to immerse myself and understand what our customers wanted by living their lifestyle.
This approach goes back to my time at Ralph Lauren, where I watched Ralph dress completely differently each day. One morning he’d walk in as a full cowboy. The next day, he’d be an athlete, then a movie star. At first, I thought it was strange, but as I spent more time there, I realized it was brilliant. That’s how he created distinct brand worlds like RLX, Purple Label, and Double RL. Each day, he would fully inhabit that brand’s lifestyle, and it informed every decision he made.
From top to bottom, everything I do now represents Golden West Boots. I’m even learning to make knives on the side because I want to understand the everyday carry culture of our demographic. If you don’t live and breathe your brand every single day, you’re just an interloper in that space.
Totaling immersing yourself
Total customer embodiment isn’t a part-time commitment. It means changing your entire daily routine to align with your target audience’s lifestyle. For Golden West, that transformation has been all-consuming. I attend rodeos not as a spectator studying a market segment, but as someone genuinely interested in that world. I listen to country music constantly, absorbing the storytelling, the values, the aesthetic.
This differs fundamentally from traditional market research. You’re not creating customer personas or analyzing purchase patterns from afar. You’re opening yourself up to fully formed ideas that come from living the lifestyle. I think about it like musicians who say that songs just fall into their lap when they’re open to receiving them. That’s how product ideas come to me—not through forced brainstorming sessions, but through immersion in the culture.
The consumer has a lot more power now than they used to. Ten years ago, brands could dictate trends. Today, with social media and direct-to-consumer channels, customers will immediately call out anything that feels inauthentic. They can spot an interloper from a mile away. The only way to create products that truly resonate is to understand their world from the inside.
Accelerating product development
When you fully embody your customer’s lifestyle, product development becomes dramatically faster and more accurate. We launched Golden West in 12 weeks because I wasn’t working from assumptions—I was designing from lived experience. I knew what would resonate because if I liked it, the customer would like it.
This approach has worked across every brand I’ve touched. At Adidas, I started making pool slides with no footwear experience, but I said yes to an opportunity and figured it out. At Ralph Lauren, I took on women’s high heels, men’s hand-sewn shoes in Indonesia, and runway shoes in Brazil. All of these were categories I’d never touched before. I’d come back in four weeks with exactly what they needed because I immersed myself completely in understanding the customer and the product.
I operate at a very quick pace, and I find that if you’re steady with that pace, it’s actually easier than the peaks and valleys of stop-start execution. Speed comes from confidence, and confidence comes from truly knowing your customer.
This approach isn’t limited to fashion or footwear. Whether you’re building software, selling food products, or offering services, you can adapt customer embodiment to your category. Start by identifying the actual lifestyle of your customer, not just demographics. Think about how they spend their days, what they value, what frustrates them.
Lainey is a storyteller, and I’m a storyteller. We tell great stories together through products because we both understand that authenticity can’t be faked.
The customer validation has been immediate, and that’s only possible when you’re designing from a place of genuine understanding rather than guessing from market research.
Catch my full interview on Shopify Masters to hear how Lainey and I are expanding the brand and how we keep customers coming back for more.
