1.
In the past year what has been the biggest
change/challenge to your marketing plan?
● The growing cost of doing business: Increasing CPCs + 10-25%
tariff increases + the highest pressure we’ve ever had from
retailers “asking” for more coop $$$ + rising ecommerce
platform costs + pricing pressure from our own factories
overseas
● Adjusting our paid acquisition strategy as Facebook costs
increase.
● Rising costs of FB, being relevant in Social when coming from
a legacy brand!

2.
In the past year what has been the biggest
change/challenge to your marketing plan?
● Subscription businesses rely heavily on member acquisition.
finding new ways to reach new customers either through
different media channels or different marketing & creative
strategies.
● The biggest challenge has been maintaining growth while
continuing to hit our CAC goals.
● The biggest change was diversifying away from Facebook
advertising, by opening up new channels that are
performance-oriented and owned (affiliate, email marketing,
PR, organic social/blog).

3.
In the past year what has been the biggest
change/challenge to your marketing plan?
● Balancing funds between measurable reach items and harder
to measure “influence” items
● Gaining an understanding of what works best as marketing
tactics/how things work together to further maximize
● Measuring results when Amazon is a large customer and we
don’t get any data from them
● Biggest challenge has been finding the best mix of
platforms/channels for growth.

4.
In the past year what has been the biggest
change/challenge to your marketing plan?
● Challenge: maintaining our category leader position. Lots of
competitors have sprung up. They are often direct copycats (poor
versions at that!) of our new products or much cheaper version. So
with marketing, it's showing WHY we are the best brand vs. the
competitors.

5.
● The biggest challenge has been finding meaningful channels of
growth / providing a robust media mix. For us, we built [the brand]
on FB/IG but costs continue to rise / the channel is becoming less
effective. So we've spent the year testing lots of new channels
(linear TV, OTT/VOD, podcasts, branded content, partnerships, etc)
in order to find how channels that we can use to diversify the
media mix and scale. Secondarily, as we use these channels, we've
often found clear attribution is lacking - we're not getting the data
we need to effectively determine if a channel is working. As a brand
that is heavily DR, it's a huge problem for us!
What is the biggest challenge you face in
maintaining or growing the pace of customer
acquisition?

6.
● Customer loyalty and brand building is earned post-purchase
these days and the challenge is to convince executives that
it’s no longer about more share of shelf and higher ad budgets
for “awareness”. WOM is much more difficult but I’d rather
put a $100 in value or services into my consumer’s pocket
than give it to Facebook.
● Conversion of the incumbent practice of purchasing eyewear
at physical retail. The [brand] proposition has been enjoyed
by tens of millions yet is still a small portion of the overall
eyewear consumer market
What is the biggest challenge you face in
maintaining or growing the pace of customer
acquisition?

7.
● Increased saturation of the marketplace and rising costs.
● CRM & growing alongside and with the consumer
● Competing against our own customers for acquisition
(amazon, etc) but where we are trying to maintain certain
price and protect the equity of the brand
● Maintaining efficiency while scaling.
● Increasing CPM/CPC and fatigued audience
What is the biggest challenge you face in
maintaining or growing the pace of customer
acquisition?

8.
● Rising CPAs due to increased Social costs. Educating internal
stakeholders on new channels. Finding the right products
that justify DTC spend and attention from consumers when
selling a legacy brand
● Keeping CAC down. Identifying channels that bring in high LTV
customers. Continuing to diversify beyond paid ads on
Facebook and Instagram
What is the biggest challenge you face in
maintaining or growing the pace of customer
acquisition?

9.
● Since our market is shrinking (people are having fewer babies
each year), we look at share of market. Our growth focus is
on EBIT since we have been making substantial progress on
the “middle” part of our P&L these past several years.
● Revenue, unit sales, customer acquisition
● Primarily, it’s through top line revenue growth; but we also
dig down deeper into growth per product and from channel
to channel.
How does your company define “growth”?

10.
● Most importantly, have we increased sales year over year?
From there, it's dissecting sales into a few different cuts:
A. what products are driving growth? / Are the new products
we've developed bringing new people into the fold?
B. Average Order Value
C. What is the ratio between repeat purchasers and new
customers?
How does your company define “growth”?

11.
● New customers
● Increase in sales overall
● Increase in brand engagement
● Sales growing above category/industry averages. Continuous
improvement – a virtuous cycle of mutual benefit.
● Growing membership subscribers at allowable CPAs
● Scale.. I spend a lot of my time educating what growth of
data, consumer conversations, etc. looks like knowing the
scale happens outside of the DTC channel
How does your company define “growth”?

12.
● We define "growth" as attracting new subscribers and
improving retention. We will look to increase AOV as we add
new products.
How does your company define “growth”?

13.
What has been your biggest challenge in working
with outside agencies and tech providers?
● Agencies want long term billings not start-and-stop projects
(typically). Often don’t share our vision since their founders
have baked their own vision into the culture. Difficult for
agency employees to work outside that box. We consistently
oscillate between agencies and in-house FTEs and we move
fast (agency), learn and then hire based on those learnings.
Then we repeat the cycle.
● Management. Synchronicity.

14.
What has been your biggest challenge in working
with outside agencies and tech providers?
● We've worked with a variety of agencies/tech partners - some of which
have been very successful and others which were not. The ones that were
not came down to two things:
1. They had their own agenda/strategy they wanted to put in place that
didn't ladder up to ours and because of that, they were not receptive to
our feedback / thoughts. As the client, it's a huge issue as we are the ones
that drive the strategy and vision for the brand.
2. Getting the data/reporting we wanted; with a few media partners,
there was a level of reporting / metric deep dive that we'd get throughout
the buy and at the conclusion of it, but they couldn't deliver on what they
sold it. As mentioned, getting lots of data is extremely important to us,
and helps us make business decisions.

15.
What has been your biggest challenge in working
with outside agencies and tech providers?
● Most outside agencies don’t take the time to fully understand
the brand and how to convey our brand message through
advertising. They get too bogged down into the metrics to
focus on the core part of the business.
● Getting all agencies to work together and maximizing the
potential
● All agencies being aware of all results of other agencies to
max potential
● Overall time management from my team – ie much time
managing each agency

16.
What has been your biggest challenge in working
with outside agencies and tech providers?
● Balancing speed, cost, and performance. We feel like we can
move faster and cheaper internally, but sometimes may be
leaving some performance on the table. How can we improve
performance without losing speed or
● We handle everything in-house. The challenge [with agencies]
is usually a difference in interest. Having business-driven units
in house will make sure we are chasing the same KPIs and
align on priorities.

17.
What has been your biggest challenge in working
with outside agencies and tech providers?
● Performance in CPG and performance marketing outside of
CPG are quite different. Finding a balance has been
challenging for many partners
● The biggest challenge is maintaining a steady flow of
communication, as well as holding them accountable and
measuring performance.

18.
What has been your most successful tactic in
increasing the lifetime value of your customer base?
● Providing a compelling product assortment. We've found that
our hero [product] is the gateway product for customers. It's
expensive at $249, but once they are in, it's leads to repeat
purchases...on our products that are at a much lower
threshold. They are so in love with the most expensive
product that buying these additional ones are an easy
investment for them.

19.
What has been your most successful tactic in
increasing the lifetime value of your customer base?
● What’s interesting about this question is that as a mid-sized
manufacturer, we never truly knew what our avg LTV was.
We’re actually not even sure that our Retail partners did. It’s
only now through our DTC efforts (Brand website direct) that
we are starting to understand all the purchases a single
consumer takes across our huge catalog and across our
brands.
● Delivering high quality products at the lowest pricest the
industry can offer

20.
What has been your most successful tactic in
increasing the lifetime value of your customer base?
● From a strategic level, having the right merchandise and
marketing that fit customer’s demand, which changes quite
drastically in the world of fashion, is something we are really
focusing on.

21.
What has been your most successful tactic in
increasing the lifetime value of your customer base?
● We have implemented style advice through SMS messaging,
and private communities that are only available if you make
three purchases or more.
● Email campaigns/valuable content
● Adding subscriptions – it reduced the barriers to re-purchase
● Sharing data across platforms to increase bundle
opportunities

22.
What has been your most successful tactic in
increasing the lifetime value of your customer base?
● Our most successful tactic is communication with customers
through multiple channels. This includes our CX team, who
help customers get the most of their purchase, and email
surveys, which help identify areas for growth. We also
continue to develop product and UX based on customer
feedback.

23.
● Development time
● It’s always a challenge to develop products that stand out
from the crowded marketplace and can be competitive.
Staying within your niche will be limiting, but growing beyond
your niche may spread the business too thin. Finding that
right product that helps you get to the next step is a big
hurdle.
● Validating that you have the credibility to extend to the new
space
What is the biggest challenge in developing new products
that expand the brand and deepen customer
engagement?

24.
● knowing what the right products are. We work to identify
these through customer surveys, sampling and testing before
we launch anything. But it can be a challenge to find the time
and resources for that.
● We've really refined our testing/research strategy before
launching a product which has helped decrease the chance of
flops - using our super fans and existing customer base to gain
insights on product improvements and what new products
they want. Then using them to test iterations of products
before we actually launch then.
What is the biggest challenge in developing new products
that expand the brand and deepen customer
engagement?

25.
● It might mean a big shift. An example, we are originally a
footwear company. Two years ago or so, we made a decision
to expand massively into apparel, and it turned out our
customers love us for who we are – a footwear company. So
we are now re-focusing all of our effort into making solid
women footwear at accessible prices.
What is the biggest challenge in developing new products
that expand the brand and deepen customer
engagement?

26.
● The new products that will truly expand the brand are at odds
with Retail Buyers who ask for this but focus conversations (&
forecasts) on new fashions for the existing line unfortunately.
Online, “old is gold” so we’re free from this work load. As we
expand our online sales channels, we’re finding that these
new products that deepen consumer engagement are actually
not Products at all - they’re Services. Our go-forward DTC
model is to take the margin that would normally be offered to
retailers and invest it in delivering our product wrapped in a
blanket of post-purchase services.
What is the biggest challenge in developing new products
that expand the brand and deepen customer
engagement?