Customer's Success Story | Aphago & Customily

Some brands find their path by accident. Aphago found it by refusing to give up on one.

In Brazil, print-on-demand is a business of niches. Sellers rarely try to be everything to everyone. Back in 2023, Leandro Pitelli ran exactly that kind of focused shop: a t-shirt store built around the maternity market. Personalization wasn't part of the plan yet.

Then an ad found him. A U.S. store selling a personalized product, its comments full of Portuguese - proof that Brazilian shoppers wanted this too, even if no one nearby was selling it to them yet. That ad was Leandro's first real look at product personalization. It was also his first introduction to Customily.

There was no grand strategy behind what happened next, just curiosity, and a hunch that this format could work for his audience too.

Discovering Customily

Leandro signed up for Customily shortly after seeing that ad, with a simple goal: recreate the product that had caught his eye. He had no personalization experience, no template to follow, and no one nearby who had done it before; in a market this niche-driven, he was largely figuring it out on his own.

A Rough Start That Didn't Stick

Building that first product took about two months, a slow, trial-and-error process of learning how personalization actually worked.

And when it launched, it wasn't good. The product was, in his own words, poorly built. So much so that it's no longer even on his site today. It generated a handful of sales, nothing dramatic. For a lot of sellers, a rough first launch like that is where the personalization experiment quietly ends.

Leandro didn't stop there. Instead of abandoning the format after one weak result, he treated it as a starting point. He kept building new personalized products, testing different concepts to see what his audience actually responded to, without knowing yet which one, if any, would land.

Then one of them broke through.

The Product That Changed Everything

The breakthrough was a t-shirt. It was the same kind of product Leandro had been selling all along, but with personalization built in, and it caught on and started selling fast - enough to convince him this wasn't a side experiment anymore. From that point, he committed his brand fully to personalized products, and even changed its name: what had been a maternity-focused label became Aphago.

The shift went deeper than the catalog. Leandro's original store wasn't even built on Shopify, he'd been running on Reserva INK. To test the personalized product, he spun up a separate, bare-bones Shopify store: no banner, no other products, nothing but the one item he was trying to validate. It was an experiment, not a relaunch.

Once that experiment proved itself, there was no reason to keep two platforms running. Leandro migrated fully to Shopify in June 2023, specifically to build his personalization business around Customily - and that migration marks the real starting point of Aphago as it exists today.

Betting Everything on Online, Personalized Retail

Before the pivot, Leandro's business looked nothing like it does today: he had run up to five physical stores in shopping centers in his region. In August 2023, he sold off his two main locations and turned his full focus to Aphago's online operation.

Of the original five stores, three were eventually sold and two closed. Today, Aphago has zero mall locations, the business lives entirely online.

That's not a small pivot. Retail leases, foot traffic, in-store staff - all of it gave way to a single online brand built around a personalized product line he had only started building months earlier. Looking back, Leandro credits Customily as an important part of that turning point.

"I don't know what would have happened if it weren't for the solution you provide," he says.

The Numbers Behind Aphago

In just under four years, Aphago has:

• Surpassed 120,000 orders
• Generated close to R$19 million in revenue (roughly $3.7M USD)

By Leandro's own account, he believes Aphago is the only print-on-demand brand in Brazil to have reached this scale - numbers he says would have been out of reach through his physical stores alone, no matter how many locations he'd opened.

It's a useful contrast: five physical stores versus one online, personalization-first brand built in just under four years. The difference isn't just channel, it's the product itself, and the ability to let customers shape it before it's ever made.

Aphago Today: A Brand Built Around Moments

Visit Aphago's storefront today and the first thing you notice is how far it has traveled from a maternity-only t-shirt shop. The brand's banner says it plainly: "Live the moment! The t-shirt is just a detail." Its tagline promises customization in about a minute, and the site calls Aphago the biggest custom brand in Brazil.

The catalog is organized the way people actually shop for gifts:

• By occasion: Father's Day, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Children's Day, Christmas, New Year's Eve, baby showers, college life, and Teachers' Day
• By person: boyfriend or girlfriend, mom, dad, grandpa, pet parents, family, aunts and uncles, godparents, expecting moms, and teachers
• By product: classic, oversized, and Peruvian cotton t-shirts, plus tank tops, cropped tees, kids' sizes, baby bodysuits, and sweatshirts

T-shirts remain the core of the business by a wide margin. More recently, Aphago has expanded into mugs and framed posters, taking the same personalization approach beyond apparel.

Look closely and the maternity roots are still there: baby showers, baby bodysuits, and a section for expecting moms sit right alongside the newer collections. The original niche didn't disappear; it became one chapter of a much bigger catalog.

Personalization That Goes Beyond a Name

Aphago's designs invite customers to put real people into the product. Depending on the item, shoppers can add names and text, upload photos (one design fits up to four children), create pet portraits in styles like watercolor and sketch, or upload their own finished artwork. A dedicated pet collection has grown into its own destination, with t-shirts, mugs, and framed posters built around the animals people consider family.

Making Customization Feel Easy

A personalized product only works if the customer trusts the process, and Aphago has built a lot of that trust into the experience:

• Every personalized order is reviewed by hand. If the team spots a typo or a low-resolution photo, they reach out to the customer on WhatsApp before anything is printed.
• The first exchange is free, even on a personalized product, with 30 days to request it.
• Orders usually ship quickly. Production can take up to five business days, but most orders are dispatched by the second business day outside peak dates like Father's Day.

Customers notice. Aphago's storefront shows an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 across thousands of reviews, and shoppers frequently describe the site as intuitive and easy to personalize.

Built on the Right Partners

Behind the storefront, Aphago's textile products are produced by Reserva, part of the Arezzo group, through its Reserva INK integration. It's a full-circle detail: Reserva INK was the platform Leandro originally ran his store on before moving to Shopify. Today it's part of his production setup, with Customily powering the personalization experience on the front end.

The brand is also expanding how it grows. Aphago runs a creators and UGC program, offers wholesale pricing for orders of ten pieces or more, and has a dedicated mobile app.

Advice for New Entrepreneurs

Leandro's story is a reminder that the first version of an idea rarely works, and that's not a reason to stop.

"I kept creating more and more products, and at some point, one of them broke through and started selling a lot."

His path from a bad first launch, to a rebrand, to closing storefronts and going all-in online shows what's possible when a founder treats an early failure as information instead of a verdict.

Why Aphago Chose Customily

Aphago's turning point wasn't a single big bet: it was Customily backing a founder who kept iterating until something clicked.

From a two-month setup and a product he later scrapped, to nearly R$19 million in revenue and a catalog spanning t-shirts, mugs, and framed posters, Aphago is proof that personalization can rebuild a business from the ground up.

Key Takeaways From Aphago's Story

• Your first product doesn't have to be good. Leandro's first personalized item was poorly built, and he still built a brand on what he learned from it.
• Test small before you commit. A bare-bones Shopify store with a single product was enough to validate the idea before he moved the whole business.
• Personalize around real moments. Occasions, relationships, and pets give shoppers a reason to buy that a plain t-shirt can't.
• Back your customers up. Manual order checks, WhatsApp support, and a free first exchange make buying something personalized feel safe.

If your first personalized product doesn't work, that's not the end of the story, Customily is your perfect partner for the next one.

✨ Let's customize the world together!‍