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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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Can Best Sellers Kill Your Brand? (😬 Yes)

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...

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How To Make "Traditional" Direct Response Ad Formats Work For Fashion Brands If you follow the big DTC growth agencies, media buyers and creative strategies on X, you’ll see a ton of Meta ad creative “best practices” that don’t really work for fashion brands. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Statiq is a performance design agency that specializes in high-performing static ads, emails and landing pages for clients like AG1, Jones Road Beauty, HexClad and ON THAT ASS....

How Do You Scale With Meta Ads If You're Defining Trends, Not Following Them? Last week I outlined how a brand can use market research tools to design into trends. But if you’re a design-driven brand, you’re trying to set trends and position yourself as a cultural authority. So, does that mean you can't use Meta ads? No. You just need to use them the right way. I’ll shout it from the rooftops: I think the Meta/Google combo is the most effective way for new brands to test product-market fit...

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DTC (fashion) Decoded Privacy Policy Effective Date: 01.01.2025 At DTC Fashion Decoded, we take your privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, and protect your information when you subscribe to our weekly newsletter. 1. Information We Collect We collect the following information: All Subscribers: Email address, email open and click activity. Paid Subscribers: Name, billing information (via Stripe). 2. How We Use Your Information We use your information to: Send you...

Expand Your TAM And Scale Your Ad Spend With Data-Informed Market Research Some products naturally perform better on Meta. I talked about characteristics that make a product “pop” on Meta here. Today, I’m going to talk about another important lever for increasing your brand’s total addressable market on Meta: designing into trends. I know some of you just recoiled in horror. “I set trends, I don’t follow trends!” Setting trends is for phase two of your brand’s growth. In phase one, you need...

The 3 Best Ways To Structure Your Fashion Brand's Meta Ads Account + Pros & Cons Of Each Last week, we talked about Meta’s Andromeda algorithm update and how that might impact your media buying strategy. This week, I’m going to outline some popular Meta account structures for fashion brands, along with the pros and cons of each. I don’t believe that there is one “right” way to structure your ads account. Different account structures serve different goals. That said, there are a few...

Is Meta Phasing Out CBO & ABO? What The Andromeda Update Means For Your Fashion Brand At the end of last year Meta announced an update to their machine learning capabilities. The update was named Andromeda, and it applies specifically to Advantage Plus campaigns. Before we get started I want to thank this week's sponsor: Segments Analytics. Built by data scientists, Segments Analytics analyzes your Shopify store to deliver actionable insights and AI-powered segmentation, allowing you to...