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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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BFCM 2025: What You Need To Know

Ultimate Guide To Holiday & BFCM 2025: Everything You Need To Beat Records & Make Money If the Black Friday, Cyber Monday (BFCM) season is important for your brand, you really need to start planning for it in July. Even if your brand is new, or BFCM isn’t a peak, you still need to consider how this season will impact you. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: WorkMagic. WorkMagic is a measurement platform that uses automated incrementality testing to calibrate...

How To Optimize Your Fashion Brand For High LTV (Hint: This Has Nothing To Do With Email Or SMS) When most marketing and eCom folks talk about “retention”, they’re using that word interchangeably with email and/or SMS marketing. But those two channels are only 25% of what it takes to drive customer retention. What’s the other 75%? An equal mix of business foundations, customer attributes and acquisition marketing. Here’s something that most operators don’t know and most retention marketers...

How True Classic Profitably Scaled TikTok Ads (And How You Can Do It Too, At Any Size) Meta ads…can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Meta’s latest algorithm update and US consumer uncertainty have teamed up to make for a challenging eCom environment in the first half of this year. This has many brands looking for options to diversify their acquisition spend away from Meta. Unfortunately, that can be really, really hard. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor:...

Strong vs Weak Brand Positioning: What Makes The Difference (And Why It Matters) This issue is part three in a three-part series on brand positioning for fashion brands. You can (and should) read part one here and part two here. Part three is going to clarify the difference between strong positioning and weak positioning and introduce some frameworks you can use to develop strong(er) positioning. Strong Vs Weak Positioning In part two I explained how Alo and Vuori leveraged positioning to...

CRO For Fashion Brands: What Moves The Needle & What Is Just Noise? CRO, or conversion rate optimization, is one of the most misrepresented disciplines in the eCom world. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Proppel. Proppel helps your marketing and operations team source exceptional remote talent from LATAM, so you can grow faster and reduce costs up to 80%. If you submit a hiring request to Proppel by June 10th, you'll receive 10% off the placement fee. Click here to...

Brand Positioning Part 2: Developing Differentiators & Strong vs Weak Positioning In part 1 of this series, we broke down what brand positioning is (and isn’t) for fashion brands. In this issue I’m going to explain how to identify white space in the market and provide some examples. In the final part of the series (part 3), I’m going to explain how to build your white space into a product charter and outline the difference between strong and weak positioning. I recommend going back to read...

Why Best Sellers Can Kill Your Brand And How To Turn Them Into A Source Of Financial Strength This is one of the most important things you’ll ever read about growing a profitable fashion brand with staying power. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Proppel. Proppel helps your marketing and operations team source exceptional remote talent from LATAM, so you can grow faster and reduce costs up to 80%. If you submit a hiring request to Proppel by May 20th, you'll receive...

Big Brand Secret: Scale Profitably By Building Multiple Revenue Peaks Into Your Annual Calendar In this issue I’m going to share a framework for making your business more predictable and resilient, along with some tactical examples for how to run this strategy. Most fashion businesses have some inherent seasonality to them. Swimsuits and snow parkas are two really obvious examples of seasonal products. But even if you design for all four seasons, most brands are naturally “better” at a...

How To Grow Your Brand's Revenues While Spending Less On Employees & Contractors In last week's members only issue, I talked about the many reasons why two brands can sell similar product, but one will scale to nine figures and the other will go out of business. Brand positioning sets your ceiling, but a lack of organizational discipline or an inability to prioritize can prevent your brand from reaching its full potential. This week, I’m going to share a framework for making better decisions...

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Positioning Strategy: The Secret Reason That Brands With Similar Products Have Different Outcomes Sporty & Rich, Comfrt and Alo Yoga all sell sweat suits to young, trend-conscious women. But each brand’s revenue varies by a factor of 10. Why? (Can you guess which brand is biggest? They’re listed out above from smallest to largest. H/t to Particl for the data) Operational skill, distribution, funding, timing and luck all play a role. But a brand’s true ceiling is determined by its positioning...