PRIMARY KPIs
CVR + LTV
We instrument both before week one and reporting against them is non-negotiable.
SECTOR 04 — CONSUMER & EXPERIENCE
Retail
& E-CommerceConversion architecture, merchandising systems, and retention loops for DTC, wholesale, and omnichannel operators.
DTCOmnichannelMarketplaceWholesale
04
Practice scope
The cost of acquisition no longer forgives mediocre merchandising. Retail and commerce brands now win on the basics done at higher resolution — taxonomy, PDP, lifecycle, retention. We rebuild commerce systems that lift conversion without inflating discount, and we tune the brand so the second purchase costs less than the first.
- Engagement
- 8–16 wks · avg length
- Audience
- DTC + wholesale
- Disciplines
- Strategy · Brand · Build · Growth
- Adjacent industries
- Food & Beverage · Media & Entertainment · Hospitality & Tourism
01
CH · 01 / 10 — Snapshot
The sector in four numbers and a posture.
Every industry opens with the same four-cell read: regime, engagement length, audience structure, and the operating signal that determines how this sector buys. Retail & E-Commerce is no exception.
AVG LENGTH
8–16 wks
Commerce sprints anchor on a peak season or a defined revenue moment.
CHANNEL
DTC + wholesale
Default architecture treats both channels as one P&L with two motions.
STACK
Shopify / headless
Comfortable across Shopify, BigCommerce, Adobe, and headless React stacks.
02
CH · 02 / 10 — Forces
Three forces reshaping retail & e-commerce.
We don't open with claims about ourselves. We open with what's actually pressing on the operators we serve — the structural shifts that determine which kinds of brand and demand work compound this cycle and which don't.
FORCE 01
Paid is no longer the lever
CAC has settled high. The brands that compound now move spend from acquisition to retention — and earn the second order through product and lifecycle, not promo.
FORCE 02
PDPs do the work brand used to
Customers decide on the product page, not the homepage. Merchandising, photography, and copy are the brand at the moment of truth.
FORCE 03
Wholesale is the margin story
DTC scales the brand; wholesale scales the P&L. Operators are rebuilding so the two channels feed each other instead of fighting.
03
CH · 03 / 10 — Sub-sectors
Four families under one practice.
Retail & E-Commerce isn't one customer. It's four — and the engagement scope, audience, and creative language we ship varies materially across them. The industry covers all four; most engagements pick one.
01
Direct-to-Consumer
Vertically-integrated brands, subscription, and category-defining DTC. Retention as the core economic unit.
02
Omnichannel Retail
Stores, e-com, marketplace — one inventory, one customer. Loyalty and clienteling as the bridge.
03
Marketplace Sellers
Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, vertical marketplaces. Listing systems, ad ops, and content that travels.
04
Wholesale & Distributors
B2B sites, line sheets, terms management. Closing the gap between brand and trade-buyer experience.
04
CH · 04 / 10 — Buyer-side
Who we actually work with.
Most marketing decks address an "audience". We address a person — usually one of three, with a budget, a quarter to defend, and a specific frustration with the marketing they've been shipped before. These are them.
FOUNDER / CEO
Profitable growth
Past product-market fit, optimizing the model so growth is funded by margin not capital.
“We can't afford to grow the way we grew last year.”
VP E-COMMERCE
Site, merchandising, retention
Owns CVR and LTV — wants a partner who treats them as one system.
“Every week is a new test. None of them rolled up to a strategy.”
CMO
Brand + performance reconciled
Negotiating between brand integrity and the metrics the board reads.
“I have a brand team and a paid team. They aren't in the same meeting.”
05
CH · 05 / 10 — Problems
Six problems we solve repeatedly.
Industry-specific, not generic. Each of these has been the headline problem on multiple retail & e-commerce engagements, and the work below is purpose-built for the regime, audience, and review cycle this sector lives inside.
P · 01
Site-wide conversion architecture
PDP, taxonomy, search, cart — the design system that compounds rather than the page that shipped this quarter.
P · 02
Merchandising & taxonomy
Catalog, attributes, navigation, and search tuned to how customers actually shop your range.
P · 03
Retention, reactivation, & loyalty
Lifecycle program, member economics, and the brand wrapper that makes them stick.
P · 04
Wholesale + DTC reconciliation
Pricing, terms, and brand treatment so the two channels stop cannibalizing each other.
P · 05
Performance & attribution rebuild
Measurement that survives the platform changes and tells the team where the dollar actually moved.
P · 06
Subscription & repeat economics
Subscribe-and-save mechanics, churn intervention, and the model behind the curve.
P · 07
Brand voice at scale
Voice that travels from the homepage to the abandoned-cart email and the unboxing card.
P · 08
Post-purchase experience
Confirmation, fulfillment, returns, and the second-purchase ramp.
06
CH · 06 / 10 — Engagement
Five deliverables we ship in this sector.
An engagement is a stack of these — chosen against your problem, your timeline, and the disciplines we need to bring. Most retail & e-commerce engagements pick three to five and run them in coordinated phases.
BUILD
Site rebuild (Shopify / headless)
Production-grade rebuild on the platform that fits your team, not a fashion choice.
BRAND
Merchandising & PDP system
Templates, photography, and copy patterns that scale across SKUs.
GROWTH
Lifecycle + email/SMS program
Retention engine with audience logic, content engine, and reporting.
GROWTH
Paid-media account rebuild
Account structure, creative testing, and the dashboard you actually trust.
STRATEGY
Channel & pricing architecture
DTC + wholesale + marketplace economics on one model.
BRAND
Post-purchase experience
Confirmation, fulfillment narrative, returns, and the unboxing.
07
CH · 07 / 10 — Blend
Discipline weighting for retail & e-commerce.
Every sector pulls on our five disciplines differently. This is the calibrated weighting — the dosing we default to on a typical engagement, before we adjust to your specific brief.
The weighting reads left-to-right as the share of senior-team focus on a default engagement. Strategy and brand carry most engagements; legal-and-compliance is supporting. No discipline disappears entirely; the ratio is what changes.
08
CH · 08 / 10 — Outcomes
Four outcomes we measure on.
Numbers below are anonymized engagement medians from comparable retail & e-commerce cohorts. Every one of them traces back to a named brief, a measurement window, and a method we'll walk you through in person before you commit to anything.
CVR LIFT
+34%
Median site-wide conversion lift after PDP and taxonomy rebuild.
REPEAT RATE
+22%
After lifecycle + retention program rebuild on a 90-day cohort.
BLENDED ROAS
1.8×
Account rebuild on like-for-like spend within one quarter.
DISCOUNT DEPTH
−6pts
Median discount lift while preserving topline post-merchandising work.
09
CH · 09 / 10 — Sector FAQ
Things we get asked every intake.
A short list of the questions retail & e-commerce buyers ask us before signing. If you've been here before, the rest of the process will feel familiar; if you haven't, this is a useful first read.
FAQ · 01
Are you a Shopify shop or a headless shop?
Both — and we recommend the platform that matches your team and roadmap, not the one we like building. Most engagements end up on Shopify Plus; about a quarter end up headless.
FAQ · 02
Do you run paid media?
Yes, but only as part of a full-stack engagement — never as standalone media buying. We won't take an account where we don't own creative and lifecycle as well.
FAQ · 03
Do you do photography and content production?
We art-direct and produce photography, video, and lifestyle content as part of the brand build. Heavy production crews are partnered through long-standing studios.
FAQ · 04
Can you work alongside an existing internal e-com team?
Most often, yes. We're explicit at week one about which surfaces we own and which the internal team owns — and the handoff at week eighteen is part of the scope.
FAQ · 05
How do you measure success?
Two numbers in every engagement: contribution-margin per visit and cohort LTV. Everything else rolls up to those.
10
CH · 10 / 10 — Adjacents
Other industries worth pulling.
Retail & E-Commerce doesn't sit in isolation. These are the practice groups we most often run alongside it — operators who share buyer audiences, regulatory regimes, or commercial dynamics with the work covered above.
SECTOR 17 · CONSUMER & EXPERIENCE
Food & Beverage
Shelf-to-screen brand, DTC + wholesale architecture, and pricing for CPG, restaurants, and beverage innovators
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 10 · CONSUMER & EXPERIENCE
Media & Entertainment
IP systems, audience architecture, and licensing / format development for publishers, studios, creators, and platforms
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 11 · CONSUMER & EXPERIENCE
Hospitality & Tourism
Experiential brand, direct-booking systems, and loyalty & pricing for hotels, resorts, DMOs, and experience operators
PULL INDUSTRY →
If your team operates in retail & e-commerce,
this is what an intake looks like.
One 45-minute call with a partner, no slides. We use the time to map your problem to the chapters in this industry and tell you — honestly — whether we're the right team for it. The answer is sometimes no, which is part of why our clients send other clients.