“You make the calls, tell us what you think we should do.”Erik Allen Ford · Co-founder & CEO, Buck Mason
“Bringing you on was the best business decision I've ever made. I just wish I would have made it sooner.”Drew Todd · Co-founder & CEO, Feals
“There's no other person that I'd gladly sit on a Zoom call with for hours on end to brainstorm ways to innovate in the DTC space.”Cleo von Siebenthal · Product Manager, Google
“What really stands out to me is how well Amit both understands and presents data, and can come up with actionable solutions.”Francesca Blyth · Sr. Project Manager, Briogeo
“The meetings have gotten a lot more productive since you changed the structure.”Dani Goldstein · Director of Brand & Creative, Crown Affair
“Amit's ability to see how one piece of content impacts the bigger picture is incredible.”Michelle Finney · Art Director, Alo Yoga
“He is able to find, learn, and implement out-of-the-box solutions to accomplish large tasks in record time.”Hannah Cosgrove · Strategic Communications, Crunchyroll
“He is one of the most creative and driven people I know and everyone who gets the chance to work with him comes out the other side better for it.”Sophie Axelson · Founder, Neighborhood Pilates
Where you are
You did the hard part. I've done the next part.
I help you diagnose the issue, take things apart, and help your team put it back together.
Read this page before the first working session. It covers what the advisor does on your behalf and what he will not do for any fee.
1-1 Things I will do
Find the constraint before you spend on it.
Put a number on every claim, mine included.
Leave a written test plan behind each week.
Say the unpopular thing while it still helps.
1-2 Things I will not do
Run your standups.
Take guesses.
Sell you software you don't need.
Profit from what I recommend.
Swipe
Fig. 1-1 — Advisory service, weeklyKeep this page with the vehicle
One client, four years
The turnaround in one chart.
Four years. Unprofitable at $5.1M, then $30M in net sales at 20% EBITDA. The gap between the two lines is the whole job.
1Feb 2022Diagnosis begins
2Jun 2022Diagnosis confirmed
3Jan 2023Solution implemented
4Sep 2023Scaling begins
Anonymized at the client’s request. Vertical scale removed.
Field note 01Supplements & wellness
Four years of losses. Growth was making it worse.
By the time I got the call the brand had lived a whole arc. Revenue ran up to $9.9M, slipped to $9.1M, and the losses grew with the scale: $4.2M gone in the biggest year. By late 2022 revenue had nearly halved to $5.1M, still losing money. Every fix before then had been a growth fix. More spend, more launches, more channels. The topline moved, and the P&L quietly recorded what all that motion produced: a bigger loss. Marketing owned ROAS. Ops owned shipping. Finance owned the autopsy. Contribution margin per order belonged to no one.
Hypothesis
The economics are broken at any size. Growth multiplies them, whichever direction they point.
Test
Freeze growth. Rebuild contribution margin per order at $5.5M, on purpose. Cut the revenue we were paying to lose, knowing the topline would feel it.
Verdict
$5.5M → $30M
2023 closed at $5.5M, barely bigger than the year before, and swung from a $1.6M loss to a $300K profit, a small number that settled the argument. Then $18.8M, then $30M at roughly 10% net. Same playbook, with volume poured into economics that deserved it.
Net salesLossProfit
Take it home. Get contribution margin per order, fully loaded, before any scale plans. Scale only what is already profitable at small volume.
Field note 02Sustainable apparel
The bundle builder felt obvious. The data said skip it.
Average order value is the lever everyone agrees on, and the bundle builder is the prom king of AOV tactics. Let shoppers assemble a set, stack a small discount, watch order size climb. We believed it too. The brand sold basics people genuinely buy three at a time, so a builder felt like a layup. Conversion dropped 23% with it live, and we watched it hold. The builder showed a bigger number, asked for more decisions, and added steps before anyone had committed. We were taxing the first purchase to chase a bigger one.
Hypothesis
Where you ask matters more than what you ask. Protect the first yes, then sell the second yes after the money is in.
Test
Same idea, other side of the payment: one post-purchase add-on, one tap, charged to the card on file, packed in the same box. Same products, same discount.
Verdict
−23% → +30%
The builder cost 23% of conversion. The post-purchase offer lifted AOV 30% at a 20% take rate, with no extra shipping weight and no discount doing the heavy lifting. Revenue that arrives without new costs lands almost entirely as contribution.
Take it home. Judge every AOV tactic on contribution per session, not on AOV alone. The default home for “buy more” is after payment, where it can't cost you the sale.
Field note 03Premium menswear
A return means the customer isn’t done yet.
Returns are a cost center. Shipping both ways, processing, the occasional write-off. So the playbook writes itself: tighten the policy, add friction, drive the rate down, celebrate the savings. That math is correct per event. It answers the wrong question. The brand's in-store reps were good. They loaded first-time buyers up: this fit in two colors, the next size as a backup, a third piece to round it out. First orders regularly ran past three items, and something always came back.
Hypothesis
Returners aren't churning. They're fit-seeking, which is what committing looks like.
Test
Stop counting the cost per return. Cut lifetime value by who returned and who didn't.
Verdict
+20% LTV
Customers who made a return were worth 20% more over twelve months than customers who never sent anything back. A return that ends in an exchange is a second considered interaction: they handled the product, made a judgment, and chose to stay.
Take it home. Make the exchange the default path. Never punish returners in segmentation. Judge policy on cohort LTV, not per-event cost. Optimize returns to zero and you optimize away your best customers.
Field note 04Checkout economics
We turned on Apple Pay. First-order AOV went down.
Every CRO checklist says turn on express wallets, and none of it is wrong. Fewer fields, faster checkout, less typing on mobile. We expected a clean win. What the checklists don't mention is what the faster path skips on the way through. Shopify's post-purchase page, the screen where a one-click add-on shows after payment, does not render for wallet orders. The moment Apple Pay went live, every customer who used it became invisible to the offer doing our AOV work. We didn't remove the upsell. We installed a bypass around it.
Hypothesis
The faster path is skipping something worth more than the friction it removes.
Test
A clean cohort: new one-time customers over seven weeks, subscriptions and BFCM codes excluded. Split AOV, repeat rate and LTV by payment method.
Verdict
−11% AOV
Apple Pay took 56% of new checkouts. Those orders ran 11% lighter, repeated 8% less, and carried 10% lower LTV. The offer they never saw was not a small thing: 20% of new customers took it, and those customers carried 53% higher AOV and 46% higher lifetime value than customers who never saw one. For Apple Pay to pay for itself, its conversion lift had to beat all of that. We could never isolate one. We turned it off until the math changes.
Take it home. Split first-order AOV and post-purchase take rate by payment method. Watch eligibility, not just take rate. Our offer stayed the same; fewer customers ever saw it. Re-run the math quarterly.
Field note 05Method
Perfect isn’t ideal.
A rock puts a star in the windshield. Everyone agrees on the answer: replace the glass. New windshield, new seal, recalibrate the camera, a day in the shop and about a grand. So nobody does it. The star spreads across the driver's line of sight, and a year later the car needs the thing it needed at the start, plus interest. Companies run the same play. One platform migration, one reorg, one hire who fixes everything. The total fix gets scoped, costed, scheduled, and never starts, while the partial one sits on the shelf.
Hypothesis
The fix that gets done beats the fix that answers every part of the problem.
Test
Resin in the chip. Twenty minutes in a parking lot, about a tenth of the cost, and the crack stops where it is. The scar stays.
Verdict
20 min vs. a day
The glass is not new. You can still see where the rock hit, if you know where to look. The spread stopped, the car passed inspection, and the money stayed in the account. Perfect answers every part of the problem. Ideal is the one that actually happens, and it usually leaves a mark.
The problem.The perfect fix.The ideal fix.
Take it home. Before you scope the total fix, ask what the partial one costs and when it could start. If the total fix will not start this quarter, it is not the plan, it is the wish.
Next step
Let’s talk.
Every quarter this stays unsolved costs you more than the fix does. Tell me what's not working. Short is fine. Most conversations don't turn into engagements. You'll know more about the problem than when you got on, either way.
