Eight years ago, Hermanos Koumori operated from one of its two founders' bedrooms. Today, it has physical stores in Roma, Condesa, and shopping malls, sells in Mexico and the United States, and generates over 2,000 orders a month.
Alex Sandler, co-founder of the brand, sat down with us for our monthly webinar with one condition: zero romanticism. None of the pretty version of how the brand was built. Just the real decisions they made, including those that didn't work out the first time.
This is what we discussed.
From lifestyle brand to running benchmark
Hermanos Koumori didn't start as a running brand. It started as a lifestyle brand because that's what its founders knew and where they saw a gap in the Mexican market. They sold at fairs, entered Urban Outfitters as their first major account outside Mexico, and did pop-ups in the United States.
And it wasn't working as they expected.
"We realized that in the end, we weren't that different. It was like we were Hermanos Koumori, Tucci, or Brava, or any of those other brands. We were the same."
The pop-ups in the United States didn't attract anyone. The message wasn't resonating.
The pivot happened almost by accident. They had a purchased collection that wasn't even for running, and they created a t-shirt with the phrase "Post-running High" because it was cotton, which was what they had on hand. The t-shirt connected. That, along with the observation that the running space had very few real brands, led them to bet everything on running.
The pandemic hit shortly after and accelerated everything: it changed consumer habits, made people more aware of their well-being, and left them in a perfect position to capitalize on it. As Alejandro says, quoting Bill Gates: "80% of success is showing up." Hermanos Koumori was there when the market shifted towards where they had already placed their bet.
The challenges of operating in fashion that aren't visible from the outside
Fashion is not like selling skincare or CPG, and Alex was clear about the problems that industry brings and that are rarely discussed.
The balance between trend and innovation
There's a fine line between being recognizable enough to the public and innovating at the same time. And that line gets complicated because, according to Alex, all brands in the world follow the same Instagram accounts.
"Everyone thought they were innovating, and in the end, we all had the same reference."
Their solution: look for references in old magazines and books, in places not so commonly seen online.
Cash flow in an import industry
A large part of Koumori's product comes from Asia, which means months between purchase and sale. The problem is that the customer expects their order to arrive quickly, not on a pre-sale with a six-month wait, and physical stores need to be stocked all the time. There's no way to finance with pre-sales as in other industries.
Planning without the previous semester's data
Koumori buys by season (spring-summer and autumn-winter) with a six-month delay. When they buy for one season, they don't yet have the results from the previous season. And the complexity multiplies with international markets with inverted seasons (Australia has winter when Mexico has summer) or without the four seasons that Korea, one of their markets, does have. Entering the United States added even more climatic diversity to that calculation.
Losing the fear of investing in advertising
For years, Koumori managed its advertising internally, with budgets of 5,000 to 10,000 pesos per month. The ROAS was 8 to 10, a very high return, and yet the fear of investing more held them back.
The change came from a $200 consultancy with an Australian advisor who showed his own Shopify dashboard growing in real time on social media. Alex's first reaction was embarrassment: "how ridiculous that I'm spending $200 when I'm spending $300 on ads." But that conversation pushed them to commit seriously for a month, and the results validated the risk.
"It was losing the fear. Literally."
The central idea that changed their way of thinking: unlike a store you rent for years, in digital advertising you can turn off the tap at any time. The risk of trying is much lower than it seems.
That change also led them to invest in new markets with a simple method: comparing what percentage of their sales came from each country against what percentage of their advertising budget went to that same country. If they sold 15% in the United States but invested much less than that there, their agency's recommendation was clear: match spending to sales, and then scale based on what works.
The discipline behind every decision: knowing your numbers before turning on the tap
From the beginning, Koumori built what they internally call their "Profit Town," a model where they clearly understand how much it costs them to store, ship, and process each order, to know exactly below what number they cannot sell without losing money.
A detail that many fashion brands don't consider: most orders are not sold at full price. Between discounts for newsletter subscriptions, abandoned carts, and other promotions, a product that costs 100 pesos ends up selling, in practice, for 80 or 85. Without having that number clear, it's easy to think the business is doing better than it really is.
From pop-ups to permanent physical stores
Before having a single store, Koumori lived off pop-ups: launches, half marathons, any excuse to set up a temporary space. They worked well, but operationally they were exhausting, from securing the space to hiring temporary staff for each event.
Their first store, the one in Condesa, was born exactly like that: they rented the space for a month, intended for the Mexico City half marathon and marathon season (July and August). It worked so well that they extended it month after month, having never planned to have a permanent store.
"We kept it in a very punk mode. Things were not planned or built to last more than two months."
The formula they use today to decide if a location is worthwhile: if the rent represents 10% or less of the sales generated by that space, it's a good location. Adding variable commissions and other operating expenses, they aim for the total cost of operating a store to remain below 20% of their sales.
After Condesa came Roma, originally opened so they wouldn't depend on a single space while they remodeled. Guadalajara followed, their first store outside Mexico City, decided with real data on which states they were selling the most online.
The most difficult step: shopping malls
Good shopping malls in Mexico sell very well, but they have a "guarantee fee" model (the right to occupy the space, separate from the rent) that can be equivalent to 36 months of rent. It's a cost that makes sense for transnational brands listed on the stock exchange, not necessarily for an independent brand evaluating its own numbers.
Alex makes an interesting observation about shopping malls that do reserve a fraction of their premises for independent brands: "that's what gives them punch," the factor that differentiates them from competitors with exactly the same offering of big brands.
Unified commerce: a single source of truth for each customer
This was the part of the conversation most aligned with where Shopify, as a platform, has been investing in recent years: unifying all sales channels under the same infrastructure.
Koumori underestimated this for years. The Shop App, the free channel that Shopify includes by default, was neglected for a long time simply because no one on the team used it personally. Once they visually cleaned it up, it started generating incremental orders that didn't exist before.
"It's free. It's there within Shopify. Many people underestimate these kinds of things."
The real value appears in the unified customer history. Last year, Koumori conducted a study of their best customers (10 in Mexico, 10 outside Mexico) to give them products from their collaboration with Adidas as a thank you, and they identified buyers who had been purchasing continuously since 2019. This type of analysis is only possible when all information, online and in physical stores, lives in one place.
The same data solves daily operational problems. When a customer comes to a store with a complaint that technically doesn't qualify for a return, the salesperson can review their history and make a better service decision if they see that it's a customer with five or more purchases. And at a strategic level, it allows them to understand a customer's complete behavior: someone who buys at the Roma store while visiting the city and then receives an email that converts them again, back in their home country.
Alex also highlighted how the AI tools within Shopify changed the way the team accesses their own data: questions that previously required a dedicated technical team are now solved directly, without relying on anyone else.
Building a brand versus competing on price
One of the most expensive decisions (in time, not just money) that Koumori made was choosing to build a brand rather than compete on price or delivery speed.
"We're not competing on who delivers a product to you faster, a product whose brand you don't care about. We are building a brand. And that's still a bit more difficult."
That decision brought a problem that few founders anticipate: global trademark registration. When Koumori signed a collaboration with Adidas, they discovered that someone in China had already registered the name "Hermanos Koumori" there, which blocked the sale of that collaboration in that market and led to a legal process. Registering a trademark in all countries where you want to operate can cost a minimum of $50,000, and availability varies: a name may be free in Mexico and the United States but not in Europe.
A lesson Alex applied from the beginning: choose a brand name that was unique when searched on Google, not a generic word difficult to legally protect in any country.
The brand also invests in actions not designed to be measured by ROAS. Its annual race, now in its second edition, is deliberately affordable with an experience that is worth much more than what the runner pays.
"It's our moment of the year when we don't ask you to give us more than we give you, and not the other way around."
What Alex would tell someone starting from scratch
Towards the end of the conversation, Alex answered direct questions from the audience.
If you had to start a lifestyle brand from scratch today, how would you scale?
Alex's recommendation is to start with organic content before paid advertising. What connects organically can later be converted into paid ads, with much less risk.
Giving away products to influencers, he says, is hard to sustain when you're just starting, so prioritize solid and consistent communication before thinking about that type of collaboration.
Alejandro Moreno, from Getmore, complemented this with a four-pillar framework they use at Getmore to evaluate any e-commerce brand: product with product-market fit, scalable technology (Shopify, for the cost and capacity it offers), clear operation from day one (you can start from home, using a shipping guide reseller like Skydropx to reduce costs), and community plus marketing, where execution depends on the available budget.
For small budgets, the recommendation is to start organically, study the Meta Ad Library of analogous brands (filtering by the oldest ads, which are usually the ones performing best), replicate with localization, and gradually open up the advertising budget as content starts to work, aiming for a minimum ROAS between 2.8 and 4 depending on each brand's model.
How do rental agreements for pop-ups work, and how do you combat product piracy?
Pop-ups are usually rented in empty spaces: art galleries (accustomed to these types of flexible agreements) or construction sites that their owners rent temporarily while awaiting permits.
Regarding piracy, Alex is honest: there's no real way to control it. Their approach is to build a brand composed of many reinforcing elements, so that copying one piece doesn't mean copying the entire brand.
What are your hiring criteria, and how has your team evolved?
They started as two partners working from a bedroom converted into a warehouse. Today, they have close to 20 people on the administrative, operational, and creative team, not including store staff.
Alex's criterion is not to hire for the sake of hiring: he prioritizes passionate people who fit with the existing team, over isolated individual talent. New positions arise from real needs, not from a predefined growth plan.
Frequently asked questions
How do you build a successful clothing brand in Mexico?
According to Hermanos Koumori's experience, the key elements are: finding a niche with little real competition (not just little perceived competition), building a distinctive brand identity instead of competing on price or delivery speed, and having strict financial discipline from the start to know exactly how much each sale costs before investing in growth.
What is ROAS and how high should it be?
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) measures how much revenue you generate for every peso invested in advertising. There is no universally correct number; it depends on each brand's model. Hermanos Koumori operates with a ROAS of 8 to 10 in some campaigns, while the framework we use at Getmore recommends aiming for a minimum of between 2.8 and 4, depending on the margins and operating costs of each business.
What is unified commerce in Shopify?
It is the strategy of centralizing all sales channels (online store, physical store, Shop App, marketplaces) under the same data infrastructure. The main advantage is having a complete history of each customer in one place, regardless of the channel they used to purchase, which improves both customer service and business decisions based on real data.
How much does it cost to open a physical store for an e-commerce brand?
There is no fixed number, but a useful formula Hermanos Koumori uses is to assess whether the rent represents 10% or less of the expected sales in that location, and to keep the total operating cost of the store below 20% of sales. Locations in shopping centers often have additional "guante" or key money costs that can equal several months of rent.
Is it worth selling on Shopify's Shop App?
Yes, especially because it's an additional free channel within the Shopify ecosystem. Hermanos Koumori neglected it for years, and by optimizing it, they started generating incremental orders that otherwise wouldn't have existed. It's a channel that many brands underestimate precisely because it doesn't require additional investment.
How do you protect a brand name internationally?
By registering the brand specifically in each country where you plan to operate or sell, as soon as possible. Waiting until the brand grows to do so can mean someone else has already registered the name in key markets, which can block international sales or collaborations and lead to costly legal processes. Choosing a distinctive brand name, rather than a generic one, facilitates this process.
Interested in learning more from real brands on Shopify?
