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DTC (fashion) Decoded

Most of the eCom and digital marketing advice published online is not written for fashion brands. It's about time we changed that. Subscribe for two free issues per month, featuring tactical guides, tutorials and case studies from real brands.

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High Sport Case Study: 5 Anti-Lessons For DTC Brands

High Sport Case Study: Ditching "Best Practices" To Transform $860 Pants Into A Must-Have Item A few weeks ago I shared my POV on why fashion brands should NOT pursue the luxury strategy. In this issue, I’m going to share an exception that proves the rule. High Sport is a brand that seems to have come out of nowhere, taking the shopping recs newsletter-verse by storm with their $860 knit pants. That’s right: $860. Knit pants. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor:...

Wholesale 101: How To Make It A Profitable Channel For Your Brand Wholesale is one of the topics I’ve changed my mind on in the past five years. I used to be against it entirely. Now I think it can be used strategically to contribute to overall brand growth. There are three good reasons for a brand to expand into the wholesale channel: The brand has proven PMF in the eCom channel and wants to use wholesale to bolster brand awareness and credibility. The brand is targeting a niche audience/the...

Don't Let This Be You: How Fashion Brands Abuse The Luxury Strategy I have a feeling this is going to upset a lot of folks reading right now. But this is a recurring issue that has sabotaged too many promising brands. It’s rare to see so much potential burned to the ground for so little payoff. So let’s talk about the Luxury Strategy, and how soooo many fashion brands abuse it. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Segments Analytics. Segments Analytics integrates with...

6 More Merchandising Secrets Big Brands Want To Keep To Themselves In this week’s issue I’m sharing six of the highest-value merchandising learnings from my interview with Nicole Guena. If you missed last week’s issue, Nicole is a merchandiser who has worked with globally recognized brands like GH Bass, DKNY and Karl Lagerfeld. Like me, she has gone solo as a consultant. If you need help with inventory planning, promo strategy, or launching more best sellers, reach out to her here. (Fun fact:...

Merchandising: The Secret Fashion Growth Hack Big Brands Don't Want You To Know Merchandising is something we don’t talk about enough in the DTC world. So I brought in an expert to help explain what “merchandising” even is, and how you can use it to grow your fashion brand. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Segments Analytics. Segments Analytics integrates with your Shopify store and finds you actionable, profitable customer segments instantly, then lets you push...

Maximize Customer Lifetime Value With My Lifecycle Marketing Playbook Now that we know how the fashion customer behaves, I’m going to share some campaigns and strategies I use to transform that information into cold hard cash. Strategic Merchandising Put your best selling products in your most expensive acquisition channels (Meta, Google, other places you access qualified in-market audiences). Develop a process for identifying new best sellers early and improving your hit rate. This process...

9 Rules That Explain How The Fashion Customer Behaves What do your customers want? In fashion that’s a hard question to answer. If you sell a shirt to 100 different people, you can be relatively confident it was purchased for 100 different reasons. That makes assortment planning and retention marketing really difficult…or does it? I’ve analyzed the raw transaction data of dozens of fashion brands, and there are quite a few recurring patterns. But first, I want to thank this week's sponsor:...

Advanced Meta Scaling Tactics: Breaking Past $10k/Day & Beyond Here it is: my ~advanced~ Meta scaling playbook. The tactics that get you to $1-5k/day in profitable spend won’t get you to $10k/day and beyond. If your brand is stuck in the $5-10k/day range, this info will help you bust out of that plateau. Inventory Planning & Speed To Market I’m putting this first for a reason: running out of your best sellers or having too much of the wrong inventory is the #1 thing that prevents fashion...

Looking For Meta Ads Inspo? Check Out These 5 Brands' Ad Libraries There are pros and cons to researching other brands’ Meta ads libraries. The pros: Meta ads have their own unique conventions and “best practices”, so the best way to get inspiration is to look at what other brands are doing on the platform. The cons: just because you see it in another brand’s ads library, it doesn’t mean the creative is “working” for the brand. Their financial goals might be vastly different from yours. Meta...

Spend Less Time On Google Ads & Drive More New Customer Sales With This Account Setup When it comes to Google Ads, it’s easy to fall into the (lack of) incrementality trap. You can spend a lot, achieve good in-platform results, and barely see an impact on your business-level sales. If you’re not familiar with the concept of incrementality, go read last week’s issue (it’s free). The Google Ads playbook I’m about to share assumes that your #1 goal is incremental new customer orders. With those...