— About Upper Story
We believe brand is an operating system — not just a marketing function.
The strongest brands are built when leadership and teams across the business understand what the company stands for, make decisions from the same principles and deliver a consistent experience at every customer touchpoint.
When people understand why the business exists, who it is for and how it creates value, decisions get faster, products get stronger and the customer experience becomes more consistent.
That is what we build from the inside out.
— Cydney Shapiro
I learned branding from
inside businesses.
For more than fifteen years, I’ve worked inside premium retail, fashion, hospitality and consumer brands — not as an advisor looking in, but as the person responsible for helping them grow.
I’ve led the transformation of a 30-year-old international hospitality brand. Built omnichannel marketing programs. Managed multi-million-dollar budgets. Launched national campaigns. Developed creator partnerships before they became standard practice. Helped businesses enter new markets, evolve their customer experience and build the internal capability to keep growing.
— Along the way, I’ve worked with brands including…
Aritzia, lululemon, Kit and Ace, JOEY Restaurants, Moxies Restaurants and HSBC. The work has been featured in Vogue, ELLE, The New York Times, Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, National Post, CTV News, Global News and more.
Those experiences shaped how I think — but they aren’t the reason clients hire me. They hire me because I know what it takes to turn strategy into something an organization can actually deliver.
Customers don’t experience strategy. They experience operations.
Brand becomes real in the everyday moments customers and employees can see and feel.
In stores. In restaurants. In customer service. In operations meetings. On the frontline. That’s why I start inside the business.
Before recommending anything, I speak with leadership, operators, employees, loyal customers — and the ones you’ve lost. I look closely at the data, the customer experience and the decisions being made across the organization.
Because the strongest ideas are often already there.
My role is to uncover them, connect them and create the clarity that allows the entire business to move in the same direction.
— Who We Work With
Upper Story partners with ambitious businesses navigating a meaningful stage of growth, transformation or change.
Our experience runs deepest across premium retail, hospitality, fashion and consumer brands — businesses where customer experience, reputation and culture directly influence commercial performance.
We work best with leadership teams that believe brand is more than marketing, customer experience is a competitive advantage and the next stage of growth requires more than another campaign.
If your business has evolved beyond the brand that got you here, I’d love to hear where you’re going next.