CASE STUDY · FASHION & APPAREL
Built like a British heritage brand. Founded in Singapore.
How Jonathan Abel went from a blank page to a men’s footwear label featured in Esquire UK and GQ UK — selling Goodyear-welted shoes worldwide and building the kind of brand that gets called “heritage” with a straight face.
WHEN WE STARTED
A blank page, an international ambition, and no shortcuts on quality.
Jonathan Abel came to Avilys pre-launch — before the brand had a name, before there was a website, before the first pair of shoes had been produced. The founder had a clear product vision (Goodyear-welted men’s leather shoes, made in Portugal, sold without the European luxury markup) and a clear commercial ambition (international from day one). What was missing was everything in between.
The brief Avilys took on was the entire business and marketing build. Brand positioning. Visual identity. Naming. Supplier coordination. Production logistics. Ecommerce platform. Content engine. Social presence. Paid acquisition. Email marketing. The international shipping setup. All of it — from concept to live commerce, then sustained over the years that followed.
This wasn’t a project. It was a partnership we’re still building today.
THE POSITIONING CALL
Make a Singapore-founded brand read like Savile Row.
The DTC menswear category is crowded with brands that look the same. Modern sans-serif logos. Photoshoot aesthetics borrowed from Off-White or Aimé Leon Dore. Founder stories that lead with disruption.
We made the opposite call. Jonathan Abel was built to read as if it had decades of heritage behind it — closer in spirit to a Savile Row tailor than a startup. The deliberate choices included a name that sounds like a person (heritage brands are named after people, not concepts). City-names for product lines — Churchill, Madison, Dallas — that nod to the gentleman-traveller era. The phrase “gentleman’s lifestyle brand” rather than “menswear startup.” A content publication called The Debonair Guide, not a blog.
None of these were small decisions. Together, they’re a coherent positioning system designed to answer one question: how does a new Singapore-founded brand earn the right to be considered alongside European heritage labels? The answer is not by claiming it. The answer is by building every brand surface to read that way from day one.
WHAT WE BUILT
A full-stack brand build. Then a full-stack growth engine.
The work spans the modules below — each one connected to the others, each one informing the next. This is what an integrated retainer looks like when it starts at the very beginning of a business.
SEO foundations and paid acquisition.
Technical SEO built into the Shopify store from launch. Keyword strategy aligned to high-intent product searches (Goodyear welted shoes, Oxford shoes, men’s dress shoes). Paid media across Meta, Google and platform-specific channels — tuned to the accessible-luxury price point and the global audience the brand was built to serve.
Ecommerce built for an international audience from day one.
Shopify build with multi-currency and worldwide shipping configured at launch — not bolted on later. Product photography, page architecture and checkout flow designed around how customers actually buy premium leather shoes (sizing confidence, return policy clarity, construction details). Conversion-rate optimisation continuing to this day.
Social presence and the Debonair Guide.
Two-year build to 20,000+ Instagram followers, anchored in the heritage aesthetic that defined the brand. The Debonair Guide — a content publication on style, shoe care, and the modern gentleman’s lifestyle — sits alongside the social work, building category authority and pulling SEO traffic in parallel.
Klaviyo automations and the Insider Rewards programme.
Post-purchase email and SMS automations built in Klaviyo, including the review request flow that’s powered the brand’s growing review base. The Insider Rewards loyalty programme designed to compound repeat purchase — because in premium footwear, the second pair is where the real margin lives.
EXTERNAL VALIDATION
Featured in the press that defines men’s style.
Esquire UK and GQ UK don’t typically cover Singapore-founded brands. The fact that Jonathan Abel landed in both is external proof that the heritage positioning Avilys built reads as authentic in the market the brand was always meant to belong in.
STILL BUILDING
The brand was built international. Now we’re activating the markets.
From day one, the strategy was global. Multi-currency shopping. Worldwide shipping. A brand voice that wasn’t anchored to any single geography. The infrastructure has always been ready for international scale.
The current phase is activating the two markets the brand was always built for: the United States and the United Kingdom. The work spans targeted paid acquisition, influencer campaigns, PR, and the early conversations on the right kind of distribution partnerships. The brand has already proved itself in press on both sides of the Atlantic. The next chapter is converting that recognition into market presence.
This case study has metrics that compound — because the work hasn’t stopped. Jonathan Abel didn’t hire Avilys to launch a brand. They hired us to build a marketing function that grows alongside the business. Years on, that’s still what we’re doing.
NEXT STEPS
Want a partnership like this for your business?
Start with a 30-minute Discovery Call. We’ll walk you through how the HIVE Engine would apply to your business — and what an ongoing retainer relationship with Avilys actually looks like.