How did Lojel scale without losing soul?

LOJEL is a design-led travel and everyday carry brand built on thoughtful design and simplicity. As it scaled globally, the challenge wasn’t changing what made the brand meaningful, but ensuring that meaning could hold together as more people worked with it.

LOJEL was growing fast. New markets, new categories, new channels, but the brand wasn’t scaling in the same way. Japan saw it one way, APAC another. Retail, e-commerce, and campaigns all told slightly different stories. No one was wrong, but nothing fully lined up. There was good work, strong products, clear intent, but every launch started from scratch. Different teams reinterpreted the brand each time, slowing things down, creating duplication, and making consistency harder to maintain. What once felt intuitive became harder to apply as complexity increased.
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I stepped in as Chief Creative and Brand Officer to realign how the brand actually worked across the business, leading brand experience, creative, production, and marketing as one connected system. The shift wasn’t about redesigning the brand, but protecting what made it distinctive while making it usable at scale. We turned it into something teams could work from, not something they referenced afterwards. That meant aligning how products were positioned, how campaigns were built, how retail showed up, and how content was planned, not as separate outputs, but as a shared logic. Instead of asking “does this look on-brand?”, teams could start from “what’s the right thing to do here?”
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Decisions began happening earlier, with less back-and-forth. There was less rework, less duplication, and more consistency across markets. This wasn’t a traditional rebrand, but a shift in how the brand operated. It moved from something people interpreted to something people could build from. Creativity didn’t disappear, it became more focused, more connected, and more effective.
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The result wasn’t just a clearer brand. It was a way to scale without losing what made it meaningful in the first place, giving the business a more sustainable foundation for future growth.

impact

Growth with control.
A unified direction replaced reset-each-launch workflows, improving speed and consistency across markets. +18% marketing efficiency, +22% faster go-to-market, 10+ global campaigns delivered.

Smarter spend at scale.
Modular systems reduced duplication as the business expanded. ~30% leaner A&P spend, ~25% reduction in duplicated production.

‍Better experience, less friction.
Clear brand principles improved navigation and service consistency across touchpoints. NPS 57 → 66, ~88% service satisfaction, +17% CRM engagement.

One brand, globally applied.
Shared systems enabled consistency without uniformity. 90%+ adoption of global toolkits, stronger cross-market coherence.

Behind the work

A peek into the conversations behind the work, where ideas were tested and alignment built, shaping the brand into something teams could use consistently. Turning intuition into shared logic.

What problem were you really solving?

Nothing was wrong with the brand. The organisation just hadn’t caught up.
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Teams were doing good work, but not in the same direction. Regions were interpreting things differently, timelines were tight, and alignment was happening too late. The issue wasn’t output, it was how decisions were being made across teams.

What did you actually change?

We put structure into how the brand operated day to day.
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This included global campaign toolkits, clearer GTM frameworks, and defined workflows across brand, marketing, and production. Teams had a shared starting point instead of building from scratch each time.
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We also aligned how product stories, campaigns, and content were planned, so there was a clearer link between what was being made and how it showed up in market.

How did that show up in real work?

“Designed to move with life” became the direction teams could build from, not just a line. Campaigns became easier to brief, produce, and roll out because everyone was working from the same idea.
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We introduced modular creative systems that could adapt across regions. Global toolkits set the direction, while local teams could apply them without losing consistency. Assets were planned upfront to work across e-commerce, retail, and social, reducing rework and making production more efficient.
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The work didn’t just look aligned. It was built to move, scale, and hold together across markets.

How did you stop it becoming just another guideline?

By embedding it into workflows.
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Instead of static guidelines, we built tools teams used while working, campaign briefs, GTM templates, production planning, and retail frameworks.
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The PPPS lens (People, Places, Perspective, Simplicity) became a simple check teams could apply quickly. It helped guide decisions without slowing things down.

What about retail and customer experience?

We translated the brand into clearer in-store and service principles.
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Retail layouts, visual merchandising, and customer touchpoints were aligned to the same logic as campaigns. Stores became easier to navigate and explain, and service teams had clearer guidance on how to represent the brand.
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This helped create a more consistent experience from online to offline, rather than disconnected moments.

What changed once it was in place?

Decisions moved earlier and teams stopped reinterpreting the brand each time. Work became faster, more consistent, and easier to execute across markets. Campaigns rolled out with less friction, production waste reduced, and retail and digital began to connect.
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The brand didn’t get louder. It became easier to use, and started supporting growth instead of reacting to it.

Behind the work

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