Founder — Atelier 8

Melanie Hordagoda

I do not advise luxury retail from the outside. I have spent my career inside it.

Two decades building and transforming flagship environments — for established luxury brands and high-growth businesses learning to operate at scale. Atelier 8 is not a team, an agency or a panel of advisers. It is one operator, eight weeks, on the floor.

Melanie Hordagoda standing in a quiet, pale-walled flagship interior, black and white

  1. The floor

    Twenty-four years inside luxury retail, almost all of it standing on the floor rather than describing it. Established flagships and fast-moving businesses, London sites and international networks. The environments differ. What decides them rarely does.

  2. The instinct

    I can read a flagship within a day.

  3. The studio

    Atelier 8 is the model I wanted as an operator and could never buy. One person, eight weeks, inside a single flagship. Present from day one, measured against the same commercial outcomes as the team, with part of the fee tied to the numbers agreed before I begin.

Hands resting on an open notebook on a travertine counter during a morning briefing, a colleague gesturing mid-sentence