Making a troubled watch brand feel desirable again.
Vabene Italy had the product: colorful, irreverent watches with real fashion energy.
What it had lost was confidence.
Bad press, missed deliveries, and distributor concerns had weakened the brand just as Toy Watch was dominating the category. Vabene needed more than a new look. It needed to feel investable again—credible enough to expand, and distinctive enough to compete.
So I rebuilt the brand from the ground up.
Brand Redesign
The move was not to make Vabene look like luxury. It was to make its color, attitude, and Milanese irreverence feel like the point.
We developed a rebellious visual world built around saturated color, playful fashion codes, and a sharper contrast against the black-and-gold polish of the competition. Then we carried it across the full system: brand identity, online store, shop design, print campaigns, video, photography, packaging, brochures, app, and style guide.
Rebrand Launch
The relaunch culminated in a pop-up flagship for Milan’s Salone del Mobile, with a custom video-mapping experience that introduced the new Vabene to the market.
The result was a brand people could see again.
Vabene earned coverage across major watch publications, style magazines, newspapers, and blogs. The app and online store became meaningful new sources of revenue. Investor support followed, helping fund more than twelve new boutiques across the Middle East, China, and Far East Asia.
