Ecommerce Playbook: Numbers, Struggles & Growth

Steve Rekuc, Director of Data at Common Thread Collective, joins Richard to break down the Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025 year-over-year data from the DTC Index. The headline: Meta spend is up 25% year over year while ROAS only degraded 3%. Google ROAS actually increased 12% despite higher spend. The platforms are getting more elastic. In this episode: Total revenue up 13.6% YoY with more coming from returning customers Meta spend up 25.28% with only 3% ROAS degradation Google ROAS up 12% with 3.65% more spend Why AI-driven ad delivery is making both platforms better CPMs are up but click-through rates are improving The DTC Index data set: 200-300 stores, proprietary consumer confidence metrics Consumer confidence: future purchase sentiment and hope for the economy How the DTCCI (DTC Consumer Confidence Index) predicts spending elasticity Show Notes: Go to https://www.chargeflow.io/ and use CF30 to recover chargebacks free for 30 days. Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

The number one pain point brands bring to us: "My current agency gives me execution, not strategy." Luke and Richard, break down why that complaint, while valid, doesn't go far enough. Most brands are stuck in one of two broken relationships: An agency that only executes (you tell them what to do, they do it) A consultant that only strategizes (they give you a plan and leave) Neither owns the outcome. And that's the real problem. In this episode, Luke and Richard walk through the hierarchy of what actually matters: Execution is the baseline (necessary but not sufficient) Strategy is the ascension (backed by data, methodology, and experience) Outcome is the North Star (predictable results you can hold someone accountable to) Key insight: If the outcome isn't there, the strategy doesn't matter. If the strategy isn't there, the execution is just busy work. The Prophit Engine is built to own all three. 3% forecast accuracy across billions in managed revenue. That's outcome ownership. Show Notes: Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign. Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

Taylor and Luke, walk through exactly how the Prophit Engine system enables one person to deliver the work and outcome of three. This isn't about replacing people with AI. It's about what happens when you combine 12 years of methodology, a purpose-built data infrastructure, and an operator empowered by enterprise-grade tooling. In this roundtable replay, Taylor demos: How data infrastructure creates the foundation for fast decisions The planning process: marketing calendar → financial forecast → daily targets Statlas dashboard: from contribution margin to campaign-level actions The Hierarchy of Metrics: diagnosing problems top to bottom Creative demand planning: how many ads, what products, which moments Outlier engine: why 3.5% of ads drive 66% of spend How AI context layers are making Prophit Engineers move 10x faster Luke walks through: Creative analytics: spending power, outlier rates, activation economics How to turn creative production from gambling into math Key stat: 3% forecast-to-target accuracy across $3B+ in managed revenue. Show Notes: Go to https://www.chargeflow.io/ and use CF30 to recover chargebacks free for 30 days. Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at podcast@commonthreadco.com to ask us any questions you might have

Tony Chopp, walks through the Hierarchy of Metrics — the framework our Prophit Engineers use to diagnose problems and take action for 170+ ecommerce brands. In this episode, Tony and Richard break down a real brand example in Statlas, showing how you go from a contribution margin miss all the way down to a specific campaign adjustment in Google Ads. The hierarchy: Business-level metrics (revenue, contribution margin, ad spend) Customer-level metrics (new vs. returning, paid vs. organic) Channel-level metrics (Google, Meta, email — iROAS by channel) Campaign-level actions (bids, budgets, new creative) Key takeaways: Your ROAS target should be backed into through incrementality math and unit economics — not vibes "4 is not necessarily better than 3" — if 3 is the right number based on your COGS and incrementality, targeting 4 leaves volume on the table Over-efficiency is a symptom of underspend, not a badge of honor Good data in = good decisions out. The system is only as strong as your cost data, audience segmentation, and incrementality testing Show Notes: See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/ Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

AI is changing how ecommerce brands produce creative. But most brands are using it wrong. They're generating entire ads with AI and wondering why performance drops. Or they're ignoring it entirely and falling behind on volume. In this episode, we break down how to actually use AI in your creative workflow without sacrificing the authenticity that drives results. The brands winning with AI aren't replacing their creative process. They're using AI to scale what already works. What we cover: Why pure AI-generated creative sees CTR drops within 3 weeks Where AI actually adds value in the creative pipeline (backgrounds, cleanup, iteration) How to maintain authenticity while increasing creative volume The production ecosystem that lets you play probability instead of gambling Why 3-5% of your ads drive 70-80% of spend and what that means for AI If you're running Meta ads and trying to figure out where AI fits into your creative strategy, this episode cuts through the hype. Show Notes: Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign. Explore the Prophit Engine Lite: https://meetings.hubspot.com/richard-gaffin The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at podcast@commonthreadco.com to ask us any questions you might have

Common Thread Collective is now an owner in Commerce Roundtable. In this episode, Taylor with Jimmy Kim, founder of Commerce Roundtable, to tell the full story of how this partnership came together and why in-person events matter more than ever. Jimmy shares the origin story of Commerce Roundtable, from a 50-person CBD roundtable in a San Diego office in 2019 to a community-driven ecommerce event with 350+ curated attendees. Taylor talks about why CTC decided to go from attendee to owner, and what they're building together. What we cover: How Commerce Roundtable started in 2019 and evolved through COVID Why most ecommerce events are broken (vendor-first, content-last) The difference between sponsor-driven events and community-driven events Why physical proximity and in-person relationships compound over time How CTC and Commerce Roundtable plan to work together What's coming: Austin (April 20-21), retention road show, San Diego (September) Why brands are willing to pay $400 to be in the room The future of ecommerce events and education If you're building an ecommerce brand and you want to be in rooms with operators who actually get it, this is why we invested. Commerce Roundtable: https://commerceroundtable.com Show Notes: See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/ Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

Every ecommerce growth team spends the majority of their time answering the same five questions. The problem? Most brands answer them with disconnected tools, siloed teams, and spreadsheets that have nothing to do with the actual marketing levers they can pull. In this episode, Luke breaks down the five questions that account for 80% of your marketing team's work - and how the Prophit Engine answers all five inside a single system: What should my forecast be, and what does each channel need to deliver? What's the optimal spend allocation across channels? How much creative output do I actually need? What's the right full-funnel Meta strategy and daily optimization workflow? Where's the gap vs. forecast, and what specific action closes it today? For each question, Luke walks through how brands typically answer it (disconnected finance forecasts, historical budget splits, gambling on creative volume, manual ad building, weekly business reviews) - and how a unified system replaces all of that with daily clarity. Show Notes: See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/ Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

CTC has never had a service offering for brands below seven figures. That changes today. Prophit Engine Lite is for any Ecommerce brand with established revenue below $1M annually. If you're past the startup phase, running ads, generating sales, and trying to figure out how to grow profitably, this is built for you. In this episode, Richard walks through exactly what PE Lite includes: Step 1: Connect every data source to Statlas. Marketing data, store data, COGS, shipping costs, fixed expenses, promo schedule. Everything in one place. One source of truth. Step 2: Build a custom 12-month forecast model. What happens if business continues as usual? What needs to change to hit your goals? Where are the gaps? The model shows you. Step 3: Growth guidance from a Prophit Engineer. Monthly sessions where your PE guides you through what to do next. What levers to pull. Where to allocate budget. What to stop doing. Plus: Weekly cohort Q&A with Joy Sharma (Head of PE7 Accelerator). Learn alongside other founders in similar positions. Pricing: $1,500 onboarding (data integration + model build) $500/month after (month-to-month, cancel anytime) Show Notes: Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign. Explore the Prophit Engine Lite: https://meetings.hubspot.com/richard-gaffin podcast@commonthreadco.com

Most brands are stuck in a cycle: source UGC creators, send product, hope the content is usable, repeat. The hit rate is low, the management is painful, and the content lacks consistency. Adrianne breaks down a different model: a dedicated in-house creator, fully managed by CTC. What this episode covers: Why one dedicated creator outperforms a rotating roster of 50 UGC creators How CTC matches creators to brands based on lifestyle, aesthetic, and audience fit The three boxes every brand needs checked: high quality, high volume, high diversity How the same creator face showing up across formats (ASMR, product walkthrough, day-in-the-life, green screen) builds trust Real examples: East Coast apparel brand matched with a creator who lives by the water, and a high-end furniture brand where gifting product is a $10K gamble How this feeds the PE creative demand model The surround sound strategy: same person, wildly different formats The dedicated creator model delivers the authenticity of UGC with the consistency and volume of an in-house team.. Show Notes: See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/ Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

Most 7-figure brands are stuck in the same loop. They've outgrown guesswork but can't justify a $15K/month agency retainer. Every dollar has to work, and there's no infrastructure to know if it is. Joy Sharma breaks down how the Prophit Engine system adapts for brands in the 7-figure range. What this episode covers: Why "just use AI" doesn't replace the PE - the difference between general advice and accountability backed by 12 years of data The 3 core services: forecasting, strategy, execution - all in one operator Why creative strategy lives inside the PE (and why that's controversial) The "ruthlessness of the forecast" - how modeling drives every decision Creative scoring: why making more ads doesn't help if they all look the same to Meta How the growth strategist connects creative to the marketing calendar, not just to ROAS Units of growth: marketing calendar, creative, landing pages, offers The Prophit Engine 7 uses the same methodology, same data models, and same system as the full PE8 - calibrated for the stage your brand is at. The PE doesn't replace your internal team. It gives them the infrastructure they've been missing. Show Notes: Visit https://postscript.io/ to turn your replies into revenue. Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

Every brand wants more capacity from their growth team. Most try to solve it by adding people or plugging data into ChatGPT. Neither works. In this episode, Luke breaks down the 3-layer infrastructure behind the Prophit Engine that actually creates capacity: Layer 1: The Database Order-level, finance, marketing, and cost data aggregated in one place. Living in the context of your targets and forecast, not just historical performance. Informed by a data set across hundreds of brands and billions in GMV. Layer 2: Methodology & Context The layer most people skip. Drop a Statlas dashboard screenshot into an LLM with no context and you get useless output. Layer in CTC's hierarchy of metrics, outlier methodology, and 12 years of pattern recognition across the DTC landscape and the output transforms completely. Layer 3: The Tech-Enabled Operator The Prophit Engineer sits on top of both layers. Not just a person with a dashboard. A person with aggregated data, informed methodology, and AI tooling that multiplies their capacity to make decisions and execute in real time. This is why one Prophit Engineer outperforms a traditional 4-person growth team. The infrastructure does the heavy lifting. The operator makes the decisions. Show Notes: Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign. https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-enginepodcast@commonthreadco.com

Most brands have a media buyer, a strategist, and a creative lead. Everyone's doing their job. Everyone has a dashboard. But when you ask "are we on plan this week?" you get three different answers. In the episode Luke breaks down the three pillars of accountability inside the Prophit Engine: We create the forecast AND execute against it. No handoffs between planning and doing. One person owns the entire workflow. Every lever is at their disposal, from media mix to creative strategy to Meta campaign builds. Skin in the game. Our compensation is tied directly to hitting your contribution margin target. This isn't about adding more people. It's about collapsing the workflow into one operator with the full picture, backed by infrastructure that handle Show Notes: Visit https://postscript.io/ to turn your replies into revenue. Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at podcast@commonthreadco.com to ask us any questions you might have

Most ecommerce brands are making slower, worse decisions than they realize, and it's not because of bad people. It's because of a broken structure. In this episode, Richard sits down with Luke and Tony to break down one of the most important benefits of the Prophit Engine: total clarity. From fragmented data and siloed teams to a single operator with a full end-to-end view of the business, they unpack exactly why consolidation leads to better decisions, faster action, and stronger results. They also walk through a real-world sale that crushed projections, and explain why having three people with three partial views of the same problem is often worse than having one person with the complete picture. In this episode: Why siloed teams lead to degraded decision making The 3 layers of clarity the Prophit Engine provides How a single operator outperformed a multi-person workflow over a live sale weekend Why your Meta media buyer needs to understand your inventory position What the biggest ecommerce opportunity looks like in 2026 The litmus test: How much of your weekly marketing meeting is spent figuring out what's going on — versus actually making decisions to change it? If most of your time is in the first bucket, this episode is for you. Show Notes: Visit Postscript.io to turn your replies into revenue. Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

What if one person could replace your entire ecommerce growth team, and get better results? In this episode Richard and Luke break down exactly how the Profit Engine works and why it's changing the way DTC brands scale. Luke walks through the four core functions every ecommerce brand needs — forecasting & target setting, creative strategy, media measurement, and Meta media buying — and explains how one person, enabled by the right tools and data models, can own all four. The result? A leaner, faster, more profitable growth operation. What we cover: What the Profit Engineer role is and why it exists The 4 data models powering the forecasting system (Spending Power, Retention, Event Effect & Creative Demand) How to build a daily forecast accurate to within 3% of target How the Ad Plan determines exactly how much creative you need and who should make it How Media Mix Modeling (MMM) and geo holdout incrementality testing optimize budget allocation across channels How the "Push to Build" feature launches Meta ads in seconds instead of hours Why reducing time from insight to action is the real unlock for ecommerce growth Everything you need to understand the Profit Engine system — from the data models to the media buying — is in this episode. Show Notes: Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign. Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine podcast@commonthreadco.com

Common Thread Collective just launched the Prophit Engine to the public—and in this episode, Richard and Taylor break down what it is, why it exists, and how it helps DTC brands forecast more accurately, grow contribution margin, and simplify their growth stack for less cost. You’ll hear how CTC is combining data + methodology + AI-enabled tooling into a system (and a new “Profit Engineer” role) that replaces complexity with clear expectations and execution. What we cover Why profit + predictability are harder than ever for DTC What the Prophit Engine is and the outcomes it’s built to deliver How the Profit Engineer role collapses growth strategy, Meta buying, and creative strategy into one operator What brands still own vs. what CTC takes off the plate—and who this works best for In short: this episode introduces CTC’s Prophit Engine as a tech-enabled operating system for growth—built to replace a fragmented stack of people + tools with one clear forecast, tighter execution, and accountability to contribution margin. If you’re trying to run leaner without sacrificing performance, this is the blueprint for how CTC thinks the next era of agency services will work. Show Notes: https://www.dataships.io/demohttps://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-enginepodcast@commonthreadco.com

In this episode, Richard and Taylor Holiday discuss the rise of the “SEANs” — the Software-Enabled AgeNcy — and why it represents a fundamental shift in how eCommerce brands will build growth teams going forward. Taylor explains how traditional agencies struggle to operationalize institutional knowledge across individuals, leading to inconsistent execution and diffused accountability. The solution? Embedding a clear point of view directly into software, turning ideology into infrastructure. Rather than offering neutral tools like Ads Manager, CTC is building software with an opinion: a system designed to unify marketing and finance around a daily, trackable path to predictable, profitable growth. The conversation explores: Why “software with a point of view” is different from open-ended tools How declining SaaS gross margins and rising customer demands for outcomes are collapsing the line between software and services Why agencies are becoming more like software companies — and software companies more like agencies The impact of AI on compressing labor costs and increasing individual output expectations If you care about the future of growth teams, SaaS economics, and how AI is reshaping both labor and leverage inside eCommerce, this conversation is a must-listen. Show Notes: Get Dataships' free A/B test: https://www.dataships.io/demo Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com podc

Incrementality tests are “in”… but the real problem is what you do after the read. In this episode, Taylor sits down with Olivia Kory (Chief Strategy Officer at Haus) and George Davis (CMO at Cozy Earth) to unpack the messiest part of modern measurement: operationalizing incrementality when results swing, channels conflict, and “platform ROAS” can’t be trusted. If you’ve ever asked: “Our holdout came back way lower than Meta… now what?” “Why don’t test results replicate month-to-month?” “How do I actually use an incrementality factor in real budget decisions?” “If everything is under 1.0 iROAS… should we cut spend or keep investing?” …this one is for you. What we cover Why incrementality requires a holdout (and why “spend up / spend down” isn’t enough) The replication problem: why results change even with “clean” tests The gap between measurement and optimization (platforms optimize for attribution, not incrementality) How operators use incrementality factors without letting them become a blunt instrument Why channel vs. channel is often the wrong fight (and why profit thresholds matter more) iROAS → IMR (Incremental Marginal Return): a more intuitive way to compare performance Budget cadence: daily realities vs monthly allocation decisions Long-term effects, “adstock” claims, and why post-treatment windows matter Practical levers that can improve results: creative, account structure, exclusions, distribution expansion (Amazon/retail) Got a weird incrementality result? Drop it in the comments. We’ll let you know what we’d do next. Read this next: CTC Core Methodology Series: Marketing Measurement - https://bit.ly/4tW2JwF Show Notes: Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign. Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com podcast@commonthreadco.com

Sales tax feels simple—until you hit nexus. In this episode, Ryan Pinkham (VP of Go-to-Market at TaxCloud) breaks down why sales tax gets complex fast for growing ecommerce brands, what happens when you cross nexus thresholds in new states, and how ignoring compliance can turn into a painful (and expensive) distraction. We cover: What sales tax nexus actually means for ecommerce The three “buckets” of brands (doing nothing, unhappy with current tools, or knowingly delaying) Why sales tax is a year-round operational load How modern brands approach checkout tax vs. filing/registration The Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) program and why 24 states matter A simple start-of-year checklist to get compliant and reduce risk If you had a strong Q4 and expanded into new states, this is your sign to do a quick nexus and tooling review.. Show Notes: TaxCloud has you covered: https://taxcloud.com/thread/ Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com podcast@commonthreadco.com

Acquisition is getting tighter! In this episode, we flip the script and talk about the lever most brands under-invest in: retention + lifecycle marketing. Taylor is joined by Jennifer Peters, Director of DTC, MarTech & Digital Compliance at OLLY (a Unilever brand), to break down how they think about keeping customers coming back when the brand is sold everywhere — from Target and Walmart to their own DTC site. We get into what retention really means beyond “subscription,” how to message customers when you don’t want to channel-shift them, and how OLLY is using loyalty (including receipt scanning) to better understand in-store shoppers. What you’ll learn: How OLLY drives retention across DTC + retail Email vs SMS strategy, plus segmentation that prevents “list blasting” Using loyalty + receipt scanning to understand in-store shoppers Setting smarter KPIs for promos, launches, and content Why they chose Attentive, how they handled ESP migration, and where AI actually helps The first retention moves: audit flows, refresh creative, nail the basics If you’re running ecommerce for a consumable, CPG, or multi-channel brand, this is a must-watch for building a retention engine that actually scales. Show Notes: See how Attentive helps connect people and the brands they love.: https://bit.ly/4ag8oEJ Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com podcast@commonthreadco.com

In this episode, Richard and Luke unpack a pattern they couldn’t ignore after running 224 sales call transcripts through an LLM: The #1 issue mid-market ecommerce brands face isn’t that performance is down… it’s that they don’t know why performance is happening. And when you don’t trust the numbers, you can’t trust the decisions. Luke walks through a painfully familiar weekly business review scenario—multiple agencies, multiple dashboards, multiple “versions of the truth”—where 80% of the meeting is spent trying to figure out what’s actually going on, and almost none of it translates into confident action. What you’ll learn in this episode: Why brands don’t hire help because results are bad—they hire because clarity is missing The hidden cost of “dashboard chaos” (and why more stakeholders often makes it worse) The 3-step framework to go from confusion → clarity → action: Why incrementality (geo holdouts) is the gold standard when ROAS debates never end How to sanity-check your “real-time” metrics against your closed P&L (and what variance is acceptable) They also tease what they’ve been building to solve this problem end-to-end: a higher-capacity operator role designed to reduce complexity and speed up decisions—so your team spends less time arguing about numbers and more time changing outcomes. If you’re leading growth at a brand in the $10M–$100M range and your team spends more time debating performance than improving it, this one will hit home. Show Notes: Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign. Explore the PROPHIT System: http://prophitsystem.com podcast@commonthreadco.com