Case Study · Subscription and DTC Growth
Building a subscription brand from zero
CLEAN CLEAN was my own direct to consumer brand of sustainable home products. I owned everything: the brand, the offer, the store, the marketing and the team. Testing showed a member was worth about two and a half times a one off buyer, so I rebuilt the business around subscription.
The results
The challenge
A new brand in a crowded market, with no one to hand anything to
I started with two products, no brand, no store and no customers. Shoppers had plenty of established options, and a new brand had to earn trust before anyone would try it.
Early sales came from one off purchases driven by campaigns. Every month started from zero, and growth depended on buying the next customer instead of keeping the last one.
The approach
Build trust, then build the habit
Built the brand around what the customer needed to trust
I named the company, set how the site looked and sounded, and ran the comparison against competitors. I chose which product certifications to pursue based on the trust buyers needed, and wrote product language around the outcomes they cared about: safer for their home, less waste, lower cost.
Tested membership, then went all in
I tested membership against one off sales. A member was worth about two and a half times as much over their lifetime, so I moved the brand to subscriptions only. I owned the pricing, bundles and subscription design, set up the subscription platform myself, and let members change their delivery frequency, with a note before every renewal.
Built the store and five ways to buy
I built the store on Shopify and led its UX and UI, then opened four more channels: Amazon, Etsy, Instagram and Facebook shops, and Google Shopping. Product pages reached 12% conversion.
Ran acquisition and lifecycle myself
I ran paid media personally across Meta, Pinterest and Google, with landing pages matched to each ad's message. Lifecycle ran in Klaviyo: abandoned cart recovery and post purchase flows that brought buyers back. I set the affiliate strategy, kept the partners that brought the best results, and built audiences from our own customer data.
Grew the range from two products to twenty
With subscribers in place, each new product had an audience on day one. I expanded into new categories and bundled products to raise the value of every order, leading a remote international team of ten.
The through line: owning every part of a business taught me how the pieces connect. Brand, offer, store, media and lifecycle only grow revenue when they are designed as one system.