Case study · Brick-to-click full agency partnership
How we took a boutique from bricks-and-mortar to £900k annual online revenue in seven years
Seven years of a full agency partnership with a fashion boutique that already had a physical store presence when the engagement started. Online revenue grew from £134k in Year 1 to £903k in Year 7, orders from 699 to 2,955. Web build, SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, CRO, and operational consulting across ops, staff, customer service and marketing.
- Annual online revenue £903k (Year 7) from £134k (Year 1) 6.7x
- Annual online orders 2,955 (Year 7) from 699 (Year 1) 4.2x
- Cumulative online revenue (7 years) £3.21m from — Compounded from £0 online
- Engagement type Full agency partnership from — 7 years, unbroken
The client
A specialist fashion boutique that had built a strong physical-store presence and loyal in-store customer base over a number of years before the agency engagement began. Their online channel did not exist. The brief was to translate the identity, product range and service standards of the physical shop into a full ecommerce operation, and then run every layer of that operation from build onwards. As with our other full-partnership engagements, the agency has sat at every table of the online business since day one.
The problem
A boutique with product knowledge, brand equity and a loyal in-store customer base, but with no digital infrastructure and no team to build one. The physical store was healthy but exposed to the obvious risks of a single-channel retail model. The founder wanted the online channel built to the same standard as the physical store, translating the same product curation, visual identity and service quality into an ecommerce experience, then run continuously without having to hire a full in-house digital team. That is what a brick-to-click full agency partnership is for.
The plan: translate the boutique, then compound
Same six-workstream model we run across our other full partnerships, with an explicit first-year focus on translating the physical-store experience into a digital one before the acquisition programme kicked into gear.
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Shopify build tuned to the boutique identity
Original Shopify storefront built to match the visual identity, product curation and merchandising rhythm of the physical shop. Custom theme, checkout flow, product-catalogue architecture reflecting the way the founder actually thought about her range. Substantial ongoing platform work every year since to keep it evolving with the brand.
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SEO
SEO retainer since build, working the specialist fashion and accessories terms where product knowledge in the copy is the differentiator against generic marketplaces. Category depth, product-level schema, blog and buying-guide programme feeding the commercial pages.
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Google Ads
Full-funnel Google Ads programme covering Brand, Shopping, Performance Max, and Standard Search on category and brand terms. Weekly optimisation cycles, competitor-negative management, quality-score-focused ad copy. Migration between the campaign types as Google evolved the product over the seven years.
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Meta Ads (Facebook + Instagram)
Prospecting and remarketing running throughout. In a specialist fashion category, Meta is often where new customers first meet the brand, so the creative refresh cadence and the balance against Google's intent-side spending matter more than in other verticals.
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CRO and product analytics
Continuous conversion work: checkout tuning, PDP improvements for a category where fit and detail matter, review integration, cart abandonment recovery, seasonal merchandising experiments. Product-level analytics feeding buying and merchandising decisions back to the team.
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Operational consulting
The consulting layer that separates a full partnership from a normal retainer. Ongoing input on staff structure across physical and online, unified customer service policy that translates the boutique's in-store service standard into online support, courier and fulfilment operations, brand and marketing calendar planning, seasonal promotions strategy, and the founder-level strategic decisions across both channels. Agency sits at every table, not just the marketing one.
The trajectory (seven full trading years)
Annual online revenue lifted 6.7x from Year 1 to Year 7, orders 4.2x in the same period. Seven consecutive years of full-year revenue growth on the online channel.
Source: Shopify
Source: Shopify
Every year of the seven has been higher than the last on both revenue and orders. The Year 1 to Year 3 climb reflects the online channel steadily taking a rising share of loyal in-store customers as the ecommerce experience matured, plus the SEO and paid programmes finding new customers who had no prior relationship with the physical shop. The steady acceleration from Year 4 onwards is the compounding effect of the acquisition programmes catching up to the boutique's growing catalogue and the SEO investment reaching the point where organic search consistently drives new customers into the funnel. Brick-to-click done well should look like this: not a hockey stick, a compounding curve where the online channel starts as a supplement to the physical shop and gradually earns its place as a co-equal channel.
Taking your boutique or shop online?
The engagement style behind this case study is available to a small number of physical-retail founders where we can sit at every table, not just the marketing one, and build the online channel to the same standard as the store. Book a free introductory call and we will tell you honestly whether it would be the right fit.
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