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Three years ago, TWNS Original was a single rack of samples in a basement room at Brussels' Trademart. Today it's a Belgian knitwear brand stocked in more than 700 stores across a dozen European countries, with revenue that has roughly tripled every year since launch. Behind that curve is a deliberate, step-by-step growth strategy from founders Dimitri Valckaert and Tara — and a financing model built to keep pace with it.
Brand snapshot
Founded: 2023, with the Twins Distribution showroom opening at Brussels' Trademart.
Based in: Brussels, Belgium.
What they do: TWNS Original — women's knitwear, outerwear, gilets, scarves and accessories, positioned in the mid-market segment. Rather than traditional seasonal collections, the brand organises its range around themed "Clubs" — distinct wardrobe universes built around different moods and moments in modern women's lives.
Positioning: "Accessible feminine power" — colourful, elevated knitwear designed to feel effortless and personal without pushing prices into luxury territory.
Team: Founder-led by Dimitri Valckaert and Tara, backed by a small, fast-growing team.
Market: Independent boutiques, pop-up stores and multi-brand concept shops across Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the UK — with Italy and Switzerland launching next.
Website: twnsthelabel.com
The founder's story
TWNS Original started as a calculated bet rather than a grand plan. Dimitri Valckaert and his partner Tara had already tested the market with a self-made jewellery line, Tara JWLS, that scaled quickly enough to require moving production to China to keep up with demand. That early proof of concept — that there was real appetite for colourful, well-made design outside the fashion mainstream's usual palette of black, grey and beige — is what convinced the pair to go further and build a full label around it.
In 2023, they opened Twins Distribution's own multi-brand showroom: not the space the brand occupies today, but a small room in the basement of Trademart Brussels, chosen deliberately to keep overhead down while they tested demand.
"It was a calculated gamble." — Dimitri Valckaert, Co-founder, TWNS Original
The signal came fast. Both TWNS Original and the jewellery line caught on almost immediately with retailers, and other brands began approaching Twins Distribution asking to be represented as well. Within six or seven months, the basement room was no longer big enough. The team moved into a larger showroom at Trademart — renovated over three months — and opened it on January 1, 2024. Growth has been continuous since: by Dimitri's own estimate, the business has roughly tripled in size year over year.
The brand's identity is as deliberate as its growth strategy. Where much of womenswear leans into minimalism, TWNS Original built its collections around colour from day one — a direct extension of the same instinct that drove the original jewellery line.
That instinct now underpins the brand's public positioning around "accessible feminine power" — design that can be soft, playful and colourful without sacrificing quality or structure.
The growing pain
Demand has never been the constraint. Sell-through with retailers, the pace of new distributor enquiries, and the brand's own expansion timeline all point the same way: the product sells itself. The real bottleneck has been financing the next season's production before that season's sales convert to cash. TWNS runs on two seasonal cycles a year, and because each one is larger than the last, the working-capital need scales right alongside the growth itself — a classic challenge for a fast-growing consumer brand selling into wholesale.
Traditional lenders tend to be cautious about extending credit against orders that are already confirmed and sold to retailers but not yet paid for, even though, as Dimitri points out, that's a collateralised, calculable risk rather than a speculative one. For a brand growing this fast, the gap between "sold" and "paid" is where growth gets stalled — or funded.
Why Shiperise
That's the gap Shiperise has stepped into. Over the past year, Shiperise has structured purchase-order financing for Twins Distribution, funding the supplier prepayment on confirmed retail orders across four funding rounds, each sized to the season it covered, so the brand can produce and ship without waiting on its own cash cycle to catch up. Dimitri credits the partnership directly with the pace of the brand's international rollout.
"If an organisation like Shiperise hadn't been standing behind us, I think the story would have been considerably more complicated." — Dimitri Valckaert, Co-founder, TWNS Original
For Dimitri, the real value isn't just the funding itself — it's the speed. Shiperise moves at the pace the business needs, season after season, rather than at the pace a traditional lender is comfortable with.
Results & impact
Revenue growth: consistent, organic growth every year since launch — the business has roughly tripled year over year, driven in large part by expansion into new international markets.
Distribution footprint: from a single Brussels showroom in 2023 to 700+ points of sale, with active markets in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the UK, plus Italy and Switzerland launching next.
Financing scale-up: purchase-order financing structured by Shiperise over the past year, across four funding rounds, backing order books that more than doubled in that time.
Cadence: two sales seasons a year, each one larger than the last, reflecting compounding, repeatable growth rather than a one-off spike.
What's next for TWNS Original
The expansion playbook stays exactly as disciplined as it was on day one: country by country, for as long as retailer demand justifies it. Italy is next, launching next season through a distributor covering six regional agencies, with Switzerland also joining the roster. Beyond that, the brand's growth strategy is unlikely to change — validate a market, prove sell-through, then scale distribution and financing in step, the same way TWNS Original went from a basement showroom to a 700-store European footprint in three years.
Closing
From a single test showroom to a fast-scaling presence across a dozen European markets, TWNS Original's trajectory is a case study in disciplined, product-led growth. Thank you to Dimitri and Tara for sharing the story behind the brand — explore TWNS Original's collections at twnsthelabel.com and follow along as they head into new markets this year. Shiperise is proud to support fast-growing brands like TWNS through their busiest seasons— if your brand is hitting a similar working-capital wall on the way to scale, we'd love to hear from you.
