Distribution is not the same as growth.

Wilkinson ADVISORY

I help apparel, footwear and sport brands own their growth in Southeast Asia: the pricing, the marketing and the customer. On the ground in Indonesia.

12 / 8
years building brands in emerging markets, eight of them inside Southeast Asia
80+
B2B clients personally sourced, pitched and closed
+54%
growth in what my client portfolio paid the agency, over 20 months: Carlsberg, Spotify, PMI and Pink Lady
3
emerging markets built in: South Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia

Numbers from twelve years across agency, brand and founder roles in Africa and Southeast Asia. Detail on LinkedIn.

Brands I've worked on

PUMA Reebok Optimum Nutrition Garmin

Market entry and in-market activation across Southeast Asia

Carlsberg Spotify Philip Morris International Pink Lady Apples

THE MARKET READ

Most brands in APAC don't control their own growth.

Shoe boxes stacked on retail shelves

I work on the brand's side of that table. On the ground, across Indonesia and Southeast Asia, outside the distribution machine.

Getting on shelves in this region is the easy part. A handful of large distribution groups will put a brand into a hundred doors fast, and in exchange they take the pricing, the marketing and the customer relationship with them.

Most brands only feel what that trade cost them when growth flattens and they realise they can't reach their own customer.

Twelve years of that: agency work in South Africa, four years of brand and market-entry work in Vietnam, then Indonesia, where I built two companies of my own. Eight of those twelve years have been inside Southeast Asia. Different brands, same problem: someone in the market understands the customer, and it is usually not the brand.

THE THREE SITUATIONS

Is your brand in one of these three situations?

{{ s.num }}

{{ s.title }}

{{ s.body }}

{{ s.needs }}

Brands that win do it deliberately. The rest are waiting for a distributor to do it for them.

Book a call Thirty minutes. No deck, no pitch.

THE SITUATION DIAGNOSTIC

Three questions. A straight read of where you stand.

Who distributes you, who controls your spend, and what's blocking you. It names your situation back to you and says what a brand in that position typically needs. No email required, no price at the end.

Start the diagnostic
James Wilkinson

James Wilkinson

I've sat on the agency side, the brand side and the founder side of emerging-market growth. That's the vantage point this practice runs on.

South African. Studied marketing management in Cape Town and started in advertising there, then spent four years in Vietnam doing brand and market-entry work, the kind where you learn that a campaign built in one country rarely survives contact with another. Moved to Indonesia in 2022 and built two companies of my own, RecruitABLE and ServiceABLE, from nothing.

Based in Indonesia. I work with a small number of brands at a time, directly, without a team between us. If we work together you get me, not an account manager.