Case study · Full agency partnership
How we drove a premium outdoor-cooking brand to £114k in its first full year of trading
First full trading year of a full agency partnership with a premium outdoor-cooking brand. £114k in Year 1 online revenue across 135 orders on a specialist high-AOV category. Web build, SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, CRO, and operational consulting all running from launch.
- Year 1 online revenue £114k from £0 (pre-launch) First full trading year
- Year 1 orders 135 Averaging 11 per month
- Peak month £23k from — Month 7
- Engagement type Full agency partnership from — From launch onwards
The client
A premium outdoor-cooking brand with a distinctive product line-up, high-AOV catalogue, and an engaged enthusiast audience. Shopify from day one. The category rewards buyers who research their purchase carefully, which shifts the shape of the acquisition funnel: fewer, higher-value orders supported by deeper research content and a longer path-to-purchase than a lower-consideration ecommerce brand.
The problem
A launch-phase brand in a specialist category with genuine product differentiation but no online presence. Every layer of the online business had to be built from zero: the Shopify storefront, the product-catalogue architecture, the acquisition channels, the content programme, and the operational model to support high-value orders where customer expectation of pre and post-sale support is elevated. Same full-partnership model we run for our other founder-led ecommerce builds, but with a category-specific twist: fewer orders, higher AOV, longer research cycle.
The plan: build for research-driven buyers
Same six-workstream model we run on our other full partnerships, tuned to a specialist premium category where the customer research cycle is longer and the order value is higher.
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Shopify build tuned to a high-consideration purchase
Custom Shopify build. Product-page architecture designed for a researcher not an impulse buyer: extended spec, comparison against alternatives, use-case content, review integration. Storefront designed to hold attention across a longer path to purchase.
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SEO
SEO retainer since launch. Category depth, product-level structured data, buying-guide content programme aimed at the research-heavy queries that this kind of buyer uses. In a specialist category the research content is the acquisition funnel.
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Google Ads
Full-funnel Google Ads programme covering Brand, Shopping, Performance Max, and Standard Search on category and use-case terms. Careful ROAS discipline given the higher AOV. Weekly optimisation.
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Meta Ads (Facebook + Instagram)
Prospecting and remarketing across the enthusiast audience where a premium outdoor-cooking brand naturally lives. Creative refreshed regularly, content-heavy formats matched to the research-driven purchase behaviour.
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CRO and product analytics
Continuous conversion work: checkout tuning, PDP improvements for a category where product-specification detail matters, review integration, cart abandonment recovery.
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Operational consulting
The consulting layer we run across our full partnerships. Ongoing input on staff structure, customer service (elevated for a premium AOV), courier and fulfilment operations, brand and marketing calendar, seasonal promotions, and the founder-level strategic decisions of a launch-phase brand.
Year 1: monthly online revenue
Twelve months of the first full trading year, plotted month by month. Revenue was lumpy in the way a launch-phase brand always is, then found rhythm in the back half of the year with two months clearing £18k and £23k. This is what a specialist category looks like when the acquisition programme starts finding the buyer pool.
Source: Shopify
Source: Shopify
First-year online revenue for a specialist premium brand is rarely a smooth line, and this one was not either. Two things worth flagging. First, the Month 1 to Month 4 stretch was the acquisition programme calibrating against the actual buyer pool, not a failure; specialist launches always cost more per order in the first quarter and settle from there. Second, the two big months, Month 5 and Month 7, are what happens when the category matches into a seasonal moment (outdoor cooking has obvious peaks) with the paid + organic acquisition already warmed up. Year 2 of this engagement is already outpacing Year 1 at the halfway mark, and the case study will be extended once the second full trading year closes.
Launching a specialist ecommerce brand?
The engagement style behind this case study is available to a small number of founder-led ecommerce brands where we can sit at every table, not just the marketing one, and build the online channel to the same standard as the brand behind it. Book a free introductory call.
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