Period: 2018 – 2021
Scope: Brand strategy & growth
Outcome: Grew Gone. from a new Cape Town retailer into a four-location national brand with a loyal, engaged outdoor community, and campaigns still running today.

Gone. is South Africa's exclusive Patagonia distributor. I joined a few months after they opened their first Cape Town store — at the very beginning, when the brand was still finding its feet. There was everything still to build: awareness, community, content, culture.

Over three years, I helped shaped Gone. from a new retail store into a brand with a genuine community, four stores, and two annual campaign platforms that are still running today.

Laying the foundations

The first priority was giving Gone. a consistent identity — a voice, a visual language, and a content system that could hold across every touchpoint. From there, the work expanded across everything: brand strategy, social media, email marketing, graphic design, photography, shoots, art direction, website management, e-commerce, outdoor advertising, and store launches.

What’s a brand without a community

Gone.'s growth was driven by showing up consistently, generously week in and week out, for 3 years. We built an events calendar anchored in genuine contribution to the communities the brand was serving: free gear repair nights on First Thursdays, film screenings, talks, bouldering event activations, sponsoring trail races and hosting recce runs etc. The events never had a short term revenue target. We hosting them because they mattered to the community Gone. was created for — and that distinction is exactly what made the community real.

Key initiatives included:

Community-first approach: Hosted weekly and monthly in-person activations, including Duct Tape & Beer repair nights, film screenings, trail races, and talks, which created an engaged and loyal community around the brand.
Cause-driven engagement: Partnered with projects like the Pangolin Working Group and Nine Mile Surfing Project, linking the brand to meaningful conservation and community initiatives.
Strategic presence at outdoor events: Activated at climbing, surfing, and trail running events, ensuring Gone. was both present and relevant in the spaces their audience valued most.
Micro Adventures Blog: A content hub where community members shared short, everyday adventures (“micro missions”). Submissions were rewarded with store vouchers, driving website traffic, inspiring outdoor culture, and reinforcing the idea that adventure doesn’t need to be grand to be meaningful. See the blog here.
Brand campaigns.
- Launched the #Gone2Gone campaign just after lockdown; a point-to-point 21km across Table Mountain with race numbers, prizes, and free beers at the finish. It was our twist on the virtual run concept, but in person, and over 5,000 people completed the route in that first month alone. The campaign was a huge success that it’s been running every year since 2021
- R1 base layer launch, where we invited customers to recreate the “R1 song,” a campaign later highlighted by the international team. Watch the winning submission.
- Patagonia Yulex Campaign — adapted an international Patagonia campaign for a South African audiencewith a review by South African comedian and surfer Nik Rabinowitz. The local version was picked up and highlighted by the international team.
  Watch the video here.
- The #GoneSearch campaign was our Easter long weekend campaign with a twist on the classic Easter hunt. People hunted down a hidden geocache, signed the logbook, and got outside despite the chilly autumn weather.
- Introduced #OptOutside campaign on Black Friday by closing out stores and encouraging our customers to rather spend the day in the outdoors than shopping.
- Launched the #GoneIndoor campaign during lockdown, inviting the community to dust off their camping gear, share their best at-home adventure photos.

Three years later

Gone. grew from a single Cape Town store into four locations, with a community built on trust, consistency, and genuine contribution. The campaigns we built are still running..

Examples of some of the work I did:

I have developed a Newsletter strategy for Gone. Some examples can be seen via the hyperlinks: Newsletter Example 1, Newsletter Example 2 & Newsletter Example 3