Cohort-first audit, every quarter.
We review M0 acquisition cost against M3 repeat, M6 retention, and M12 LTV every quarter. The picture is almost always different from what the last-click dashboard suggests. Budget follows the cohort.
First purchase rarely pays. Apparel DTC Marketing Agency built on month twelve.
Apparel DTC is the hardest paid channel in ecommerce. CAC is brutal, first-purchase AOV rarely covers it, and every iOS update moves your attribution. We run apparel brands against LTV:CAC and contribution margin, across Meta, TikTok, Klaviyo, and Shopify. Blended ROAS is a reporting line. Month twelve is the business.
LTV:CAC
The ratio that decides whether you have a brand or a subsidy. We model it by cohort and optimize against it weekly.
Creative
20 to 40 UGC + paid social variants tested every month, with a library that tracks what won and why.
Lifecycle
Klaviyo flows that earn the second purchase and keep the third on schedule. Email is your margin channel.
Where we run apparel programs
- Meta Ads Audience + creative tests
- TikTok Ads Creator + Spark Ads
- Klaviyo Lifecycle flows
- Shopify Plus Platform + checkout
- Google PMax Shopping + intent
- UGC Pipeline 20-40 variants / mo
- Server-side Events Post-iOS attribution
- Meta Ads Audience + creative tests
- TikTok Ads Creator + Spark Ads
- Klaviyo Lifecycle flows
- Shopify Plus Platform + checkout
- Google PMax Shopping + intent
- UGC Pipeline 20-40 variants / mo
- Server-side Events Post-iOS attribution
- Meta Ads Audience + creative tests
- TikTok Ads Creator + Spark Ads
- Klaviyo Lifecycle flows
- Shopify Plus Platform + checkout
- Google PMax Shopping + intent
- UGC Pipeline 20-40 variants / mo
- Server-side Events Post-iOS attribution
- Meta Ads Audience + creative tests
- TikTok Ads Creator + Spark Ads
- Klaviyo Lifecycle flows
- Shopify Plus Platform + checkout
- Google PMax Shopping + intent
- UGC Pipeline 20-40 variants / mo
- Server-side Events Post-iOS attribution
Why apparel brands hire us
What changes when an apparel brand stops optimizing to blended ROAS.
Creative library over creative scramble.
Every variant that ships gets tagged. Every winner gets promoted. Next month's concepts are built on what the library already taught us, so we are never starting from zero on Monday.
Full rebuild cadence.
The operational commitment on every apparel engagement.
90d
Paid + lifecycle rebuild window on every apparel audit
Klaviyo + Shopify wired to the truth.
Server-side events feeding Meta and TikTok. Klaviyo flows segmented by cohort and product affinity. Shopify checkout extensions capturing zero-party data. The stack finally measures what the P&L measures.
Apparel DTC is the hardest paid channel in ecommerce.
CAC is high. First-purchase AOV rarely covers it. You are one iOS update away from your attribution breaking. The brands that grow are the ones treating CAC and LTV as one equation, and they are staffed to model it honestly.
We run apparel programs around unit economics first. We pull cohort data, model LTV, map contribution margin by channel, and only then start optimizing. The Meta account matters. The TikTok creative matters. The Klaviyo flows matter more than both. Blended ROAS is a reporting line. Contribution margin is the business.
What apparel marketing actually wrestles with
Four problems on every apparel DTC account.
01
First-purchase economics
First purchase is rarely profitable. LTV has to work. Marketing that does not think in cohorts will miss this.
02
iOS + attribution drift
Post-iOS 14 attribution gaps need server-side events, offline conversion uploads, and MMM sensibility. Self-reported attribution (zero-party data) helps.
03
Creative burn
Apparel creative half-lives fast. Without weekly UGC pipelines and testing discipline, CAC creeps.
04
Returns + repeat
Returns eat margin. Repeat purchase rate is the difference between a startup and a business.
Back of the envelope
Rough math on your apparel pipeline.
Three inputs, a snapshot of your current state. Useful for framing the conversation. Do not build next quarter's plan from it. Real results depend on brand, cohort behavior, creative quality, and category economics.
$ / mo
Total ad spend across Meta, TikTok, Google, and any retargeting.
$
Blended new-customer cost across channels. Different from MER and from last-click ROAS.
$
Average order value on the first purchase. We model LTV separately in the audit.
Your current-state snapshot
New customers / mo
~521
First-purchase revenue / mo
~$57,292
Annualized first-purchase revenue
~$687,500
Pure math on the numbers you enter. We do not promise a specific CAC for your brand. What a good program does is move the CAC and LTV you already have in the right directions. First-purchase revenue is directional. The audit frames the LTV side honestly.
The apparel playbook
Five phases of an apparel program that survives a month-three cohort audit.
Five phases that work in sequence. Paid without lifecycle burns acquisition on one-time buyers. Lifecycle without UGC stops at last-click revenue. Every layer compounds the one beneath it.
Week 1-4
Paid social rebuild
Meta + TikTok segmented by audience, creative concept, and intent stage. Server-side events. Offline conversion uploads.
Week 2-6
Klaviyo lifecycle
Welcome, browse abandonment, abandoned cart, post-purchase, VIP, winback, and review solicitation. All segmented, all measured, all reviewed monthly.
Week 4-10
UGC creative engine
Creator sourcing, weekly shoots, concept tracking, and creative library management. 20-40 variants per month.
Week 6 onward
Shopify CRO
PDP, cart, and checkout optimization. Product recommendation logic. Zero-party data capture via quizzes.
Ongoing
Retention program
Subscription or membership where applicable. Repeat purchase nurture. Reorder reminders on consumables.
What we check in an apparel audit
Where a healthy apparel account measures well.
A handful of metrics have clear industry-wide ranges. Others (blended ROAS, first-purchase CAC) swing dramatically by brand, category, and product-market fit maturity, so we measure those against your own history and cohort rather than a published benchmark.
Metric
Typical range
Notes
Blended ROAS
Varies by brand
Contribution margin is the number that matters more
Email attributed revenue
20-35%
Industry range with mature Klaviyo flows
Repeat purchase rate
20-40%
Industry range for apparel at 12 months post-launch
First-purchase AOV
$60-$180
Industry spread for DTC apparel
Signals
Why we work in apparel specifically.
- Meta + TikTok creative testing cadences running 20-40 variants monthly
- Klaviyo + Shopify Plus certified integration experience
- UGC creator pipelines across multiple apparel brands
- LTV:CAC and contribution-margin modeling as an audit deliverable
Illustrative engagement
What a typical apparel rebuild quarter can look like.
Generalized example to show the shape of the work. Every apparel engagement starts with a two-week audit. The audit tells us what is actually realistic for your brand, your cohort behavior, and your current stack. We frame the next quarter honestly from there.
What a two-week audit covers
- Blended CAC, MER, and contribution-margin baseline
- Meta + TikTok account architecture review
- Klaviyo flow inventory and cohort behavior
- Shopify checkout and PDP conversion audit
Attribution
Last-click Server + cohort
Creative
Monthly scramble Library + cadence
Lifecycle
Template flows Cohort-segmented
Services we run
What a full apparel engagement typically includes.
Paid, lifecycle, creative, and CRO running as one program with the same reporting surface.
01 / Traffic
Paid Advertising
Campaigns optimized to CPA, ROAS, and closed-won revenue.
- Meta + TikTok segmented by creative and audience
- Server-side events for post-iOS attribution
- Weekly creative library promotion and test cadence
02 / Nurture
Social Content & Video
Creative libraries engineered to convert.
Rebuild cadence: 90 days
03 / Close
CRM & Marketing Automation
The system that turns leads into deals while you sleep.
04 / Traffic
Conversion Rate Optimization
Fix the leaks before you spend more on traffic.
Adjacent verticals
Same playbook, neighboring categories.
Frequently asked
Questions we get asked every week.
-
Can you work on Shopify Plus?
Yes. Shopify Plus is the standard for our apparel clients. We work inside Shopify checkout extensibility, use Shopify Flow for automation, and integrate Klaviyo via the native connection.
-
What about TikTok Shop?
We run TikTok paid and organic content programs, and we help brands launch TikTok Shop where the operational fit makes sense. Not every brand should sell on TikTok Shop.
-
Do you help with influencer and affiliate?
Yes. Influencer seeding programs, affiliate program design, and creator partnership management are all within scope.
Named work
Apparel case studies.
Reviews
In their words.
Pulled from strategy calls, Slack threads, and end-of-quarter recaps with apparel founders and growth leads. Names and brands anonymized, voice unchanged.
S
3 weeks ago
We had been running Meta at a blended ROAS that looked fine on the dashboard but was eating our margin. They rebuilt the account around contribution margin and the monthly P&L started making sense again. First time I have felt honest about the numbers in years.
J
a month ago
We had UGC but nothing that looked like a pipeline. They built out the creator roster, the weekly shoot calendar, and the library that tags winners so the next month's variants are built on what already worked. Our team went from scrambling every Monday to actually planning.
M
5 weeks ago
The Klaviyo work alone paid for the engagement. Our flows were stitched together from a template and last touched in 2023. They rebuilt welcome, browse, abandoned cart, post-purchase, and VIP with actual segmentation. Email revenue stopped looking like an accident.
A
2 months ago
We were optimizing to last-click ROAS and wondering why repeat purchase was flat. They pulled the cohort data, showed us what month twelve actually looked like, and reframed the whole program around LTV:CAC. The retention work after that became the easy part.
Audit your apparel program.
A 30-minute call. We'll walk your actual numbers and tell you the three things we'd change first.