When I first wrote about the motivation behind Archibald back in 2018, we were 4 years in and had just added a bunch of new products to the offering beyond the Japanese eyewear we started with, and I still believed the problem was simple.

Luxury retail was unfair. Markups were excessive. Middlemen (distributors, retailers) were bloating the supply chain. There was a segment of luxury (below high-luxury) where quality was being hollowed out in service of margin.

Those things are still true.

What I didn't yet understand was that identifying a problem is the easy part. Living inside the consequences of trying to fix it is something else entirely.

This is not the story of a straight line. If anything, it's a story of reality testing conviction.

What we thought we were fighting

In the early days, Archibald, just as many "disruptors" did at that time positioned itself against the traditional luxury system.

We were seduced by a "business model" that was gaining notoriety amongst business school graduates who had a hard-on for opening an online retail brand. Fortunately (longterm) or unfortunately (venture capitalists didn't like it), we went against the grain and decided we wanted to apply the business model to the very best product we could find.

Otherwise...

We talked openly about markups. We pulled back the curtain on costs. We believed that if people saw the maths, the system would collapse under its own weight.

That was naïve.

Luxury is not a rational purchase. It never was. It is emotional, symbolic, and deeply human. No talk of mark-ups will ever create a desire for an item or replace the emotion you get from finally owning something that you have aspired towards.

We also believed (wrongly) that the biggest obstacle was the old guard: heritage houses creating barriers, department stores, entrenched distribution.

They weren't.

They are simply operating inside a system that evolved to support scale, exposure, and survival. Each actor plays an important role in designing the items, making them, creating awareness and delivering the item.

One can disagree with the outcome without pretending it exists for no reason.

Retail exists and operates the way it does for a reason. We have decided to play a different game, not that it's better but it does allow us to POTENTIALLY offer more people access to the items we make by eliminating the costs associated with having more actors participate in distribution and passing those savings to you.

We say potentially because it relies on a difficult combination of efficient marketing and word-of-mouth to replace the distribution we would have gotten had we opted to go down the more traditional route.

There is another side to it that we can't ignore. Price is one of the most powerful storytellers; every time someone tried to create a value proposition positioned as "better for less" they have failed, with the Volkswagen Phaeton being perhaps the most famous example.

What we understand now

The real damage to the idea of quality today comes from somewhere else.

It comes from an entire generation of brands that sell entry-level products dressed up as premium. In fact it's a group of companies that we've often been bundled with and came out to this world telling similar stories of "lower markups" and "cutting out the middlemen". From direct-to-consumer companies that learned how to market (or fund Facebook) before they learned how to make. From a decade of venture-fuelled storytelling that trained customers to equate clean millennial design with luxury or quality.

These brands didn't invent dishonesty, but they normalised it.

They taught people that luxury is something you say, not something you build. That quality is a vibe. That longevity is optional.

That confusion is the environment Archibald operates in now.

This despite the fact that when we first started whilst we embraced the idea of selling what we made direct and online, we had a contrarian thesis to the venture-backed slop disrupting everything from eyewear to mattresses and purposefully positioned ourselves away from it. We knew they wouldn't work out long-term, what we didn't consider was the fact that given we shared a commitment to a distribution model where the sale was mostly exclusively direct — we would be clumped in with them despite our emphasis on authenticity, craftsmanship and quality.

And it is why we are so often misunderstood.

The cost of doing it the hard way

Archibald chose a more difficult path.

We work with small workshops. We design products, spec them out fully, and commission production (there are a few items we purchase from makers and white-label but these are the exception rather than the rule). We make things in limited runs. We don't have redundancy stacked three layers deep.

That approach allows for exceptional quality — but it also leaves you exposed.

When a craftsman betrays your trust, it happens in public. When a supply chain breaks, there is no buffer to hide behind. When you misjudge complexity, the consequences arrive late, loudly, and in full view.

We've lived all of that.

The hand-welted shoe incident that came to light in April 2021 taught us that transparency without oversight is not enough. The sneaker delays that followed taught us that honesty without structure collapses into silence, and silence or lack of attentiveness causes distrust more than anything.

Both taught us that good intentions do not protect customers — systems do.

Those lessons were expensive. They were also necessary.

What didn't change

Through all of this, the core of Archibald never moved.

We still believe:

• that craftsmanship matters
• that the stories about the people and the places matter
• that materials matter
• that longevity matters
• that people should own fewer things, made better
• that the men and women who make these products deserve respect, continuity, and fair economics

We have never substituted materials quietly. We have never chased margin by cutting corners (well knowingly). We have never built a product we wouldn't use ourselves.

What has changed is how we operate — not why we exist.

Quiet luxury, properly understood

We no longer feel the need to shout about pricing. We no longer want to vilify retailers or heritage brands — they play an important role. We no longer believe that disruption is something you announce.

Real value reveals itself over time.

Quiet luxury is not about minimalism or the absence of logos. It is about integrity — in construction, in material choice, in how something ages after five, ten, twenty years.

That kind of value doesn't photograph well. It has to be lived with.

That is the work we are focused on now.

Community, finally understood

For years, we talked about community without admittedly fully understanding what that meant.

Community is not an audience. It's not a social media following (if it was we'd be fucked as we've proven to be clueless at that game a long time ago). It's not an email list. It's not a comment section.

Community is accountability.

It's having people who will question you, challenge you, cut things open when something feels wrong, and expect you to answer — properly. People who will push you to ensure you are always delivering the best possible product, understand the underlying ethos of what you are trying to achieve, and hold you accountable at every stage of the journey.

Archibald didn't survive the outrageous challenges because we were clever. It survived because enough people believed we were acting in good faith and were willing to hold us to it.

That relationship now sits at the centre of everything we do.

Who is Archibald for

Archibald is not for everyone.

It is for people who care about:

• how something is made (and with what)
• who makes it
• why it costs what it costs
• and how it will look years from now, not just on delivery day

If you are looking for the cheapest option, we are not it.

If you are looking for a trend, we are not it.

If you are looking for reassurance (of status, wealth or some exclusive club) through logos, we are not it.

If you are looking for substance — quietly, consistently, and without shortcuts — then you will understand what we are trying to do.

The reason Archibald exists today is not because we believe we've found a better system, but because we believe too many people never get the chance to understand what real quality feels like. Not because they wouldn't value it — but because they're rarely allowed to encounter it without distortion.

Our motivation is to remove just enough of that distortion to let the product speak for itself — even if doing so is slower, harder, and far less certain than we once imagined.

This brand has cost more than it has paid. It has taken longer than planned. It has demanded uncomfortable honesty.

But it has also clarified something important:

We are not here to win an argument about luxury. We are here to make things that stand up to time — including scrutiny.

The product is still the point. The work is still the work. And we are still here.

That, ultimately, is why Archibald exists.