Case Study
Sandro and Maje: from zero on Shopify to about USD 1M each in year one
Mohamed Gamal, Gambra's founder, owned the performance side of the sandro.ae and maje.ae launches for SMCP's Gulf partner: the five-year plan every KPI was budgeted against, and the acquisition stack both stores opened with. Each store did about USD 1M in its first year, and four years on both still run on Shopify.
per store in year one, from zero
two official stores, zero to live
The brief
Sandro and Maje are the Paris contemporary fashion brands of SMCP. Their Gulf partner had run their stores since 2015, nine openings across Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the first wave, and Sandro's Dubai Mall store went on to become the brand's highest-turnover store in the world. What the brands did not have in the Gulf was an official online store. In 2022 the partner built sandro.ae and maje.ae on Shopify, and the performance marketing side of both launches sat with Gamal, who went on to run growth for the group behind Nike and Under Armour in the region with P&L for about USD 60M of online revenue a year.
The constraint
Fashion is the hardest catalogue to launch on paid media. Every product is a size and colour matrix, the range turns over with each drop, and a feed that mislabels variants spends the first hour of every campaign on sizes that are out of stock. There was no store history to plan from, and the plan had to hold for five years, not one launch quarter. Two stores in the same window left no room for a second attempt: a channel unverified or a feed half mapped on launch day means months spent buying data instead of customers.
The approach
Four decisions shaped both launches. One: budget and forecast every e-commerce KPI for five years before a dirham of media was spent, sessions, conversion, orders, basket, revenue, media and cost per order, year by year, so each store was judged against a plan and not against its first month. Two: connect every paid channel through Shopify's own integrations rather than a custom build, so orders and revenue reached Meta and Google from day one and stayed reliable through every theme change. Three: verify the domain for Meta and Google before the first campaign, so conversion data was trusted from the start and no ad set learned on noise. Four: run the catalogue through a feed management app built for a variant-heavy range, so Shopping and catalogue ads showed the right size in the right colour at the right price through every drop.
The result
Both official stores went live from zero inside one quarter, acquiring from day one, and each did about USD 1M in its first year. Four years later sandro.ae and maje.ae still run on Shopify on the setup they launched with.
Why it matters
A HQ brand entering the GCC with a local operator wins or loses in the quarter before launch: the plan the store will be judged against, and the acquisition stack it opens with. This launch put both first, twice, on one system, and the stores are still standing. It is the work Gambra now runs as Sprint 0 for every brand entering the region, before the first ad.
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Frequently asked questions
Who are Sandro and Maje?
Sandro and Maje are Paris contemporary fashion brands owned by SMCP. In the Gulf they are run by a franchise partner that has operated their stores since 2015, and Sandro's Dubai Mall store is the brand's highest-turnover store worldwide.
What did Gamal own?
Gamal, who went on to run a USD 60M-a-year online P&L as Director of Growth Marketing at the group behind Nike and Under Armour in the region, owned the performance marketing side of both launches: the five-year budget and forecast of every e-commerce KPI, and the acquisition stack the stores opened with, paid channels connected through Shopify, Meta and Google domain verification, and the product feed.
What were the results?
Both official stores launched from zero inside one quarter and each did about USD 1M in its first year. Four years later sandro.ae and maje.ae still run on Shopify.
How can I check this?
The two launches are listed on Mohamed Gamal's LinkedIn profile under Projects with the same scope. SMCP's 2015 press release names the Gulf partner and the first nine stores. sandro.ae and maje.ae are live today and run on Shopify.
