CASE_001
MAISON-VELA
The Brief
Maison Vela is a Florence-based leather house, founded in 1984. By 2024 the brand had a 40-year archive most luxury heads quietly admired — and a feed that almost nobody under 35 had ever seen.
Their previous agency had pushed them into "more": 30+ posts a month, influencer carousels, two relaunch campaigns in 18 months. Engagement collapsed, CAC tripled, the founder lost faith in social entirely. They came to us asking, very directly, "do we just close the accounts?"
We took the opposite position: post less, by at least 70% — and turn the account into a magazine the brand would be proud to mail to a Florentine family who still subscribes to Apollo.
The Approach
We started with a Listening Week — two long calls with the founder, an archive walkthrough at the Florence atelier, and a full audit of every channel. The audit said one thing repeatedly: the brand had a great story it had stopped telling itself.
From the archive, we built three editorial pillars: The Cut (craft and process), The Wearer (collectors photographed in their own homes), and The Letter (a monthly founder essay on a single object). Everything else — every reel, every TikTok, every grid post — had to belong to one of those three pillars or it didn't ship.
The brand had a great story it had stopped telling itself. We didn't find a new voice — we just stopped interrupting the old one.
— Lina Aalto, Creative Director
The System
One shoot day per month at the Florence atelier with our director Yuki Hara. Twelve hero pieces — eight stills, four reels — cut from that single day, then published on a six-week rotation that carried the next narrative arc.
Three pieces a week, on the same days, at the same hours. No "trending audio" chases. The founder wrote one letter a month — we ghost-edited, never ghost-wrote. UGC was hand-seeded to twelve specific collectors we already knew owned a Vela, not "creators with audiences." Paid was switched off for the first 90 days. We re-introduced it in week 13, surgically, only to amplify the three pieces that had already organically performed.
The 12-Week Arc
Week | Phase | What We Did |
|---|---|---|
WK 01 | Listening | Two founder calls, atelier visit, full archive review, channel audit. Closed with a single PDF: "What your presence actually says." |
WK 02 | Direction | Three pillars locked. Twelve hooks. A new tone-of-voice document and a publishing skeleton for the next 12 weeks. |
WK 03–04 | Production | One shoot day in Florence. Seventy-two photos, four reels, one 90-second film. Edited by week four. |
WK 05–08 | Publish | Publishing rhythm goes live. Three pieces per week, never four. The founder writes one Letter. Engagement on hero pieces 4–7× the previous baseline. |
WK 09–11 | Amplify | Three winners boosted at €1,800/week. ROAS settles at 12.4×. UGC seeding returns first inbound from collectors. |
WK 12 | Review | Retired what didn't work, doubled the Letter cadence, signed Vela onto a 12-month Maison retainer. |
The Outcome
Twelve months in, Vela is the brand-of-reference for a generation that didn't know about it 18 months ago. Direct site sales now make up 64% of revenue (was 22%). Vogue Italia commissioned a three-page editorial that ran the same photographs we already had on the grid.
Before · Q4 2024 | After · Q4 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
Retention | 17% | 55% |
Posts per month | 30+ posts, scattershot | 9–11 posts, on system |
Paid spend | €38,000/month | €4,200/month |
Average order value | €420 | €1,134 |
Press placements | 0 | 3 (incl. Vogue Italia) |
What the Client Said
Altrix replaced four freelancers and a "content manager" with one calm, editorial practice. Our brand finally sounds like itself — and our retention is up 38%.
— Elena Vela, Founder, Maison Vela
Credits
Role | Name |
|---|---|
Creative Direction | Lina Aalto — Founder & CD, Altrix |
Strategy | Marco Treves — Strategy Lead, Altrix |
Director & Photo | Yuki Hara — Editorial Film + Stills |
Editor, The Letter | Theo Aubert — Senior Editor, Altrix |
Shoot Producer | Ola Berg — Producer, Altrix |
Client | Elena Vela — Founder, Maison Vela |