Selected work · Case study
elakaioutdoor.com ↗
A premium lake- & lawn-lifestyle brand, repositioned from the ground up — and the outcome we owned start to finish.
The one line: We didn't market Elakai for a client — we owned it. Same team, same mindset, now available to you.
Read it top to bottom, or jump to the proof above. Either way, the thread is the same: a real business objective, a deliberate decision, and an outcome we can stand behind.
We built Elakai — so the honest version of this story includes the part where our own positioning was off. The games were always beautiful: heirloom-grade pieces made to be displayed. But we'd dressed the brand for the rugged-outdoor category — the travel-and-adventure buyer who shops next to Yeti, Patagonia and Marmot. Those brands earn that audience on performance: gear engineered to take a beating and survive the rigors of the outdoors. Our craft was genuine, but it was never built to be that. The product said “showpiece” while the marketing said “expedition,” and customers could feel the gap.
The easy pressure would’ve been the number — hit revenue, take more orders, squeeze the funnel. Those things matter; they keep a business alive. But the real pressure was quieter and harder: build a brand people genuinely wanted to be associated with — one with uniformity, a point of view, a reason to exist beyond the transaction. Without that foundation we’d chase numbers forever with no North Star, and today’s customer sees straight through a brand that’s only chasing money. Get the brand right, and everything downstream gets easier.
We treated Elakai the way we'd want a partner to treat us — as an owner, not a vendor. Below is what we actually touched, mapped to the way we work.
Build a brand worth associating with, and the orders stop being the hard part.
The realignment did what chasing numbers never could: it made the brand magnetic. Once the positioning matched the product, aesthetic-driven marketplaces and boutique retailers — the kind that curate rather than just stock — started seeking Elakai out, and a wholesale channel went from zero to real scale in under two years. Paired with a direct-to-consumer business already built into the millions, Elakai now spans two channels and several million dollars in lifetime revenue — with the brand, finally, doing the heavy lifting. The proof is one tab over.
Same category, a different brand altogether. The photography, the setting, the styling, and the customer it speaks to all moved. Drag the handle to feel it.
Drag the handle — or tap left / right of it — to reveal the new direction.
The 2024 refresh was a deliberate strategic move — away from the old nature-and-hiking aesthetic, toward an elevated, sought-after outdoor-goods brand. Product and people, shown in upscale backyard and event settings rather than on the trail.
The logo system
Color palette — primary
Accents — pops for web & email
Typography
Product & photography direction
Product photography shifted to clean white or transparent backgrounds for a crisp, premium catalog — paired with realistic lifestyle imagery of the products actually in use, in elevated backyard and event settings.
Brand in use
Pair the craft (the site) with the consequence (the store performance) — across both channels we run for the brand: a multi-million-dollar direct-to-consumer storefront and a wholesale channel scaled from zero to ~$914K in under two years.
Store performance — pick a channel, then rotate through the proof
Toggle the emails; scan the campaigns. This is where a buyer feels the brand has a pulse — that it ships, repeatedly.
Campaigns, social & content
We lead with brand — but a brand only earns its keep if it performs. Every figure here is real, pulled straight from the stores, and explainable on a call.
What success looked like
The Elakai story, in one line
We didn't market it for a client. We owned the outcome.
Same team, same mindset, now available to you. If your brand needs the operator treatment, let's talk.
