About Us
Brand-Led User Experience Design and Development for Luxury Brands.
Brand and Conversion, Considered as One.
How a brand looks, how it reads, and how it sells are a single problem, and we treat them as one. The decisions that protect a brand's equity are the same decisions that shape how it performs, so we make them in one place rather than handing them between teams. What results is a storefront that holds the brand's standards and earns its keep, designed and built to behave as the brand does at its best.
User Experience Design, Shopify Plus Development, Strategy, and Brand.
We work across seven disciplines, from brand and user experience to Shopify Plus development and marketing creative. Creative direction holds them together, so the parts read as one.
Luxury and Premium Brands in Fashion, Lifestyle, and Beauty.
We work with luxury and premium brands in fashion, lifestyle, hospitality and beauty, established houses as well as new and growing labels, each with an audience to protect and standards to match. Our work spans fashion and leather goods with Stella McCartney, Balmain, Liu Jo, Rat & Boa and Anglo-Italian, outerwear with Tatras, watchmaking with Baume & Mercier, wellness with Lyma and Loya, and designer-led labels including Sabyasachi, J&M Davidson, and Saloni. These are brands that sell across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and the work holds to the same standard in every market. The brief changes with each, but the principle holds: the storefront is the brand, and it is built to perform as one.
DBCO, London-Based, Senior by Design.
DBCO is led by its founder, Simon Hughes, with a focused core team, the people who do the work, not an account layer in front of them. The core team holds user experience design, development, strategy, brand and creative direction. The studio was founded in 2014, built on two decades of Simon's work with luxury and premium brands, a way of working that rewards judgement built over time rather than scale, and keeps every decision in senior hands from first brief to final review.
Simon Hughes,
Founder and Creative Director
DBCO was founded by Simon Hughes, a Creative Director and User Experience Lead with over fifteen years' experience in premium fashion, lifestyle, and luxury brands. Under his direction, the agency has delivered Shopify Plus design, UX, and creative direction for brands including Stella McCartney, Rat & Boa, Lyma, and Baume et Mercier.
Before DBCO, Simon worked across editorial, branding, and digital design at Spring Studios, Monocle, and Winkreative. He leads DBCO's creative direction and UX strategy.
How an Engagement Works.
We work with brands in three ways, depending on where they are and what the work needs. A single project, a continuing partnership, or senior direction alongside an in-house team.
A defined scope of work, from a full storefront redesign to a focused build or launch. We take it from discovery and strategy through user experience, design and development, led end to end so the brand and the storefront answer to the same standard and improve as one. The work stays with the studio, in senior hands from the first decision to the last.
An ongoing partnership on a monthly scope, for brands that treat the storefront as continuous infrastructure rather than a one-time build. User experience, conversion rate optimisation, creative direction and marketing creative, with the continuity of a studio that holds the brand's context and improves the store over time.
Senior creative and commercial direction, without the full build. For brands with a capable in-house team who want the studio's judgement on the decisions that matter: brand positioning, user experience, the direction of a redesign, and the commercial logic behind it. A defined commitment of senior time, focused on the thinking rather than the execution.
Frequently Asked Questions.
DBCO is a London studio working with luxury and premium brands across user experience design, Shopify Plus development, eCommerce strategy, brand, and creative direction. The work treats brand and commercial performance as a single discipline, designed and built to one standard.
DBCO works with luxury and premium brands across fashion, lifestyle, hospitality and beauty, established houses as well as new and growing labels. These include Stella McCartney, Balmain, Liu Jo, Rat & Boa, Anglo-Italian, Baume & Mercier, Tatras, Sabyasachi, J&M Davidson, Saloni and Lyma, brands that sell across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The brief changes with each, but the principle holds: the storefront is the brand.
Yes. DBCO designs and develops storefronts on Shopify and Shopify Plus, carrying each project from discovery and strategy through user experience, design and development. The brand and the build answer to the same standard.
A conversion agency sells the metric as the product. DBCO sells brand and commercial judgement, and treats conversion as confirmation that the judgement was sound. The studio measures the surfaces it designs, and the numbers move, but the brief is the brand, not the metric.
Luxury conversion is not a volume exercise. Friction is sometimes deliberate: pacing, restraint and editorial control protect the brand's equity while qualifying intent. DBCO designs for the customer a luxury brand wants, which is why the work converts without discounting the experience.
Consistency of judgement: typography, pacing, photography and copy holding to one standard, and an experience that withholds as deliberately as it reveals. DBCO treats these decisions as commercial ones, because in luxury, how a store feels is how it sells.
DBCO was founded in London in 2014 by Simon Hughes, whose work with luxury and premium brands spans two decades. The studio remains London-based, working with brands internationally.