Aaron Wallace

The brand had built a strong presence in retail, with products sold through established partners like Superdrug, Sainsbury's, and Saks Fifth Avenue (to name a few). However, the team at Aaron Wallce knew that to scale their business and deepen customer relationships, they needed to invest in their direct-to-consumer (DTC) channel.

As with many brands focused on retail, they found that the DTC landscape presented an entirely new set of challenges - each of which was preventing them from reaching their full potential online.

Aaron Wallace had invested heavily in retail partnerships, which meant many of their customers were accustomed to buying their products in-store. This made it difficult to shift consumer behaviour and encourage shoppers to buy directly from the brand’s website without cannibalising their retail sales. Simply having a DTC option wasn’t enough, the brand needed to find new digital audiences - and without a compelling reason to buy online, customers continued to purchase from third-party retailers, where Aaron Wallace had less control over the customer relationship and their margins were lower.

In retail, customer loyalty often relies on store convenience, shelf placement, or habit, but in the DTC space, retention strategies need to be more deliberate. Aaron Wallace faced the challenge of how to create a deeper connection with their customers online to encourage repeat purchases. Without a thoughtful retention strategy, the brand risked losing its most valuable customers - missing out on the long-term value that loyal DTC customers can provide.

Being able to determine what a good customer looked like was a challenge for a small team and with limited resources and budgets, Aaron Wallace struggles to engage with high value customers on a regular basis. This left the brand struggling to maintain their desired profit margins and competing not only with their competitors, but also at the mercy of rising customer acquisition costs in Meta and Google.