It’s a punishing moment to be a fashion brand. From global tariff shifts and slowed consumer spending to the shuttering of e-commerce players and the fragility of wholesale networks, navigating the industry’s volatile ecosystem requires resilience, adaptability and conviction. Miista, the London-founded footwear brand known for marrying avant-garde silhouettes with Spanish craftsmanship, has spent the last decade building those muscles.
Founded by Laura Villasenin in 2010, Miista quickly gained a cult following, with its experimental shoes and recently launched ready-to-wear. But it’s the brand’s deeper commitments — community, craft and a refusal to chase growth for growth’s sake — that have become its greatest assets in today’s climate. Now, Miista is deepening those values with the launch of a direct-to-consumer (DTC) site designed to meet the operational and logistical complexity of a truly global business.
“By the time we reached the pre-pandemic era, our dependency on wholesale was quite small,” says the brand’s CEO (and brother of the founder) Pablo Villasenin. “That really helped us navigate the difficulties of a very challenging moment like the pandemic and post-pandemic period. We had resilience by relying on our core customer base, who really stood by us and supported us.”
Unlike many brands that were forced to retrench post-2020, Miista’s strong DTC base became a launchpad for wholesale growth — what Pablo calls a “reverse model”, now split 70 per cent DTC and 30 per cent wholesale, with their fiscal year target for 2025 projected at €20 million. Supporting this evolution is a new sophisticated, headless commerce platform tailored to the brand’s three primary regions: the UK, the US and the EU. “Each of those regions has its own accounting and operational specifications, so we needed to treat them like standalone markets,” explains Pablo. “But we also wanted the frontend experience to feel like a unified global brand.”
The result is a modular, API-rich infrastructure designed to meet the logistical demands of a modern, cross-continental fashion business. Whether integrating with a new warehouse in the US, or launching a limited-edition collaboration, Miista’s latest system can flex quickly and cleanly.
This backend architecture — localised but seamlessly connected — is part of Miista’s long game: staying agile, scaling at a healthy pace and building supply chain infrastructure that reflects its values. For now, the company is focused on growing at its own speed. Miista is currently seeing 35 to 40 per cent month-on-month growth in its DTC business, an impressive figure by any standard, but refuses to pursue hyper-growth at the expense of its identity. “We don’t want explosive growth if it means sacrificing who we are,” says Pablo. “We’re reinvesting all our profits into the business. We know the rate at which we can grow sustainably and organically.”
A commitment to craft
In today’s luxury landscape, craft has become a valuable currency. Brands name-check ateliers and revive artisanal narratives to counter growing scepticism around quality and authenticity. But while many are only just beginning to centre ‘the maker’ in their storytelling, Miista has been committed to this for a while, with craft woven into the brand’s origins and embedded in every design decision.
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