Fashion brand Hightide Frankie lifted its return on advertising spend (ROAS) to 968 percent by February 2026 from 371 percent in the first month after using “sales-linked advertising.”

Sales-linked advertising is a model in which Cafe24 runs ads without paying or topping up ad costs in advance, then settles after sales occur. It is designed to support small brands that do not have dedicated ad staff, with the Cafe24 Marketing Center handling ad planning, creative production and media operations. It can reduce workload in environments where a small team handles multiple tasks, as there is no need to frequently check ad spend or top up budgets directly.

Hightide Frankie is a brand launched in April 2024 by co-CEOs Donghyun Kim (김동현) and Bogil Jang (장보길), who previously worked together at a womenswear brand. Kim handled brand operations and worked as a merchandiser at menswear and womenswear brands, building market insight across brands with different identities such as street and contemporary. Jang worked as a fashion designer for about 20 years. It is a combination of their respective experience in brand operations, product planning and design.

The brand began with a menswear-focused collection and has expanded the share of womenswear. Women’s products now account for a larger share, but it continues to pursue a unisex direction without limiting its category by gender or a specific style.

The limitation was ad operations. As the scope of product assortment, content and sales operations widened, the two co-CEOs needed to spend more time on the brand’s core. In a structure where key staff handle everything from product planning and production to content and sales operations, it was difficult to also manage advertising in-house. Each time performance fell short of expectations, the work of creating new materials and revising and replacing them repeated, increasing the operational burden.

The two co-CEOs opted to split roles by adopting Cafe24’s sales-linked advertising. The structure is to refine product planning, content and sales strategy in-house while outsourcing ad operations. Kim said, “Rather than constantly paying attention to ads, I can focus more on areas the brand must do well directly, such as product planning, content and sales strategy.”

That division of roles led to better ad performance. ROAS rose to 968 percent by February 2026 from 371 percent in the first month and has since stayed in the 600 to 800 percent range. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) shopping mall sales also increased, with cumulative sales in 2026 surpassing full-year sales in 2025. The structure also enabled communication because a dedicated Cafe24 manager responded even in sudden promotion situations, and the automatic settlement of ad costs reduced the work of checking balances or topping up budgets.

Cafe24 presented the Hightide Frankie case as showing that outsourced ad operations and a post-payment settlement structure can ease workload even for small brands that find it difficult to employ dedicated ad staff.

Hightide Frankie plans to expand its range beyond apparel to lifestyle products. Kim said, “Rather than becoming a grand brand, I want it to become a friend-like brand that you naturally meet often, whether in your closet or in everyday life.”