D2C knitwear / Brand launch + acquisition economics
TEPLO
The first drop sold. The economics were bad.
Contribution margin over a beautiful sales number
September 2024–June 2025 · Project-owner operating record
01 / The assignment
Project facts
- Engagement
- September 2024–June 2025
- Launch budget
- ~$5,800
- Workload
- 12–14 hours / week at launch; later 8–10
- Channels
- Instagram, Telegram, micro-influencers, marketplace test
Starting point & challenge
Six weeks before the first drop, the brand had no existing audience. The positioning was factory-made knitwear with manufacturing shown as it actually happened.
The launch was built in public through raw materials, production, fittings, mistakes, packaging and product decisions rather than a polished finished-brand fiction.
02 / Responsibility
Owned, delegated, client-side
Project work
Launch content, waitlist, influencer collaborations and channel experiments. No named production-team breakdown was supplied.
Founder / business
Product pricing, manufacturing and order economics formed part of the operating decisions described here.
03 / Work log
How the work unfolded
Six weeks before Drop 1
Show the manufacturing decisions
The content documented real production stages and imperfections. By launch, the waitlist was approximately 1,900 people.
Drop 1 · first 11 days
Sell-through was only half the story
An 8.4% waitlist conversion implied approximately 160 orders. Sell-through reached 92% in 11 days. At $58 average order value, reported revenue was approximately $9,280.
The $29 cardigan had approximately $14 product cost, $6 logistics and $5.50 packaging plus payment processing: only $3.50 contribution before acquisition, against a reported $19.40 Drop 1 CAC.
Pricing correction
Accept the audience loss
The cardigan relaunched at $39. Communication emphasized cost per wear and longevity rather than affordable knitwear. Approximately 600 people unfollowed; the price change was not reversed.
Contribution before acquisition rose to around $13.50 or more per order. This improved the path to payback through repeat purchasing, but did not establish cohort-level profitability.
Drop 3 / by month six
Track improving acquisition alongside retention
Reported CAC fell to $11.80 by Drop 3. Total orders reached approximately 2,100 by month six, and repeat purchase within 90 days later reached about 24%.
Twenty-three barter collaborations with creators of roughly 5K–30K followers generated 214 promo-code-attributed orders. They are tracked orders, not a separate incremental-sales experiment.
Two-month marketplace test
Distribution revenue was not enough
Ozon generated approximately $4,100 in two months. Commissions, margin and observed overlap with owned-channel demand made the result less attractive than the revenue headline.
The marketplace was reduced to clearance and remaining inventory. The supplied cannibalization estimate is not published as a numeric result without its estimation method.
04 / Operating infrastructure
What made the work repeatable
Build-in-public content
Materials, production, fittings, mistakes, packaging and product decisions.
Unit-economics review
Price less product cost, logistics, packaging and payment costs before acquisition.
Creator tracking
Promo codes across 23 barter collaborations.
Attribution and repeat purchase
Promotional codes and post-purchase surveys, with missing-source orders excluded from channel claims.
05 / The difficult part
Failures, constraints & corrections
The cardigan was underpriced
At $29, the approximate $3.50 pre-acquisition contribution could not support the reported $19.40 acquisition cost. The response was a pricing correction, not simply cheaper traffic.
A necessary price increase lost followers
About 600 unfollows followed the $39 relaunch. The business retained the new price to protect contribution.
Marketplace revenue obscured channel economics
The Ozon test produced revenue but raised margin and owned-demand overlap concerns. Its role was narrowed to clearance inventory.
06 / Reported outcomes
Before & after
Instagram audience
0
~11,200
Telegram audience
0
~3,400
Reported CAC
$19.40 · Drop 1
$11.80 · Drop 3
Cardigan price
$29
$39
Cardigan contribution before acquisition
~$3.50
~$13.50+
Total orders
No existing audience at launch
~2,100 by month six
Repeat purchase within 90 days
Not supplied
~24%
“We nearly destroyed the margin chasing a beautiful sales number. The best decision we made was raising the price and accepting the follower loss.”
From this record to your scope
What would fit your business?
This historical engagement had its own team, budget and scope. Paid acquisition, CRM projects and technical SEO described in these records are not automatically included in today’s monthly publishing package. Past outcomes are not a forecast.
Explore managed social media operations · See the $399 monthly scope and exclusions · Review the material, approval and publishing process