Company Background
Founded in 2019, Walker and Hunt began as a vision to redefine premium menswear. Operating on a DTC model while also collaborating with retailers across Ireland and the UK, the brand has been a beacon of style and quality. As a Shopify-based retailer, Walker and Hunt recently ventured into the UK market. Their story is one of ambition, quality, and a relentless pursuit of excellence in the luxury fashion arena.
The Challenge
With expansion came formidable challenges:
As sales began to soar post covid and even earlier this year, the business found themselves with a shrinking bottom line. The increased sales, were boosting top line revenue but a mix of high operating costs and overinvestment in ad spend meant that net profits were shrinking.
- Rising Advertising Costs: As the brand grew, so did the expenses in capturing market attention.
- Unclear on Unit Economics: Understanding the intricacies of costs versus earnings became increasingly difficult.
- Higher CAC in New Markets: International expansion brought about a spike in customer acquisition costs.
- Sales Volume vs. Marketing Efficiency Dilemma: Finding the sweet spot between increasing sales and maintaining marketing efficiency was a persistent struggle.
“One thing I’ve found this year is that e commerce is a numbers game masquerading itself as a marketing game. StoreHero has helped with everything from giving us a real time P+L, to improving efficiency and marketing spend. Without StoreHero, it would take me hours of spreadsheet work to get the same level of insights, now I just log in and can start making the most important decisions.”
Solution
StoreHero emerged as the game-changer for Luke, the founder. It provided a unified platform to merge data streams from ecommerce, marketing, and finance. This holistic view revealed critical insights:
- Addressing Over Discounting: Recognizing the pitfalls of excessive discounts which were eroding profitability and trained bad habits with customers.
- Marketing Spend Analysis: Identifying overspending in certain areas of marketing, which paradoxically reduced margin despite higher sales.
- Contribution Margin Mastery: Understanding and applying the concept of contribution margin enabled a delicate balance between sales volume and marketing spend efficiency, significantly enhancing both top and bottom lines.
Strategy
Adopting a profit first approach, Walker and Hunt implemented several key strategies:
- Restrained Marketing Spend: Carefully reducing marketing spend at times to evaluate its impact on sales and margins. Only increasing spend when there were clear uplifts in contribution margin.
- Order-Level Profitability Tracking: Using StoreHero’s Order Level P+L to pinpoint and eliminate underperforming orders. StoreHero helped Walker & Hunt identify a pattern of unprofitable orders.
- Creative Performance Analysis: Employing the Creative Overview to identify and focus on high-performing marketing creatives.
- Reduced Costs: Reduced operating expenses that were unnecessary and that had crept up over time. Operating costs of the business as a % of net sales are down 29%.
“Prior to StoreHero, I now realised I lacked the confidence and clarity to scale the business profitably. The rising costs of ads is a challenge for all businesses, since onboarding with StoreHero I now make every decision with margin in mind and it’s been an absolute gamechanger.”
Luke Dully
Founder of Walker & Hunt
The Result
With real time reporting Walker & Hunt have almost doubled net profit (+97%) YoY since using StoreHero. Having a clear view to a real time P+L along with live contribution margin analysis meant that they could quickly spot emerging problems and double down on opportunities.
StoreHero, has saved Luke on average of 8 hours per week and he no longer had to rely on lots of different spreadsheets that constantly needed to be updated.
Company Background
Founded in 2019, Walker and Hunt began as a vision to redefine premium menswear. Operating on a DTC model while also collaborating with retailers across Ireland and the UK, the brand has been a beacon of style and quality. As a Shopify-based retailer, Walker and Hunt recently ventured into the UK market. Their story is one of ambition, quality, and a relentless pursuit of excellence in the luxury fashion arena.
The Challenge
With expansion came formidable challenges:
As sales began to soar post covid and even earlier this year, the business found themselves with a shrinking bottom line. The increased sales, were boosting top line revenue but a mix of high operating costs and overinvestment in ad spend meant that net profits were shrinking.
- Rising Advertising Costs: As the brand grew, so did the expenses in capturing market attention.
- Unclear on Unit Economics: Understanding the intricacies of costs versus earnings became increasingly difficult.
- Higher CAC in New Markets: International expansion brought about a spike in customer acquisition costs.
- Sales Volume vs. Marketing Efficiency Dilemma: Finding the sweet spot between increasing sales and maintaining marketing efficiency was a persistent struggle.
“One thing I’ve found this year is that e commerce is a numbers game masquerading itself as a marketing game. StoreHero has helped with everything from giving us a real time P+L, to improving efficiency and marketing spend. Without StoreHero, it would take me hours of spreadsheet work to get the same level of insights, now I just log in and can start making the most important decisions.”
Solution
StoreHero emerged as the game-changer for Luke, the founder. It provided a unified platform to merge data streams from ecommerce, marketing, and finance. This holistic view revealed critical insights:
- Addressing Over Discounting: Recognizing the pitfalls of excessive discounts which were eroding profitability and trained bad habits with customers.
- Marketing Spend Analysis: Identifying overspending in certain areas of marketing, which paradoxically reduced margin despite higher sales.
- Contribution Margin Mastery: Understanding and applying the concept of contribution margin enabled a delicate balance between sales volume and marketing spend efficiency, significantly enhancing both top and bottom lines.
Strategy
Adopting a profit first approach, Walker and Hunt implemented several key strategies:
- Restrained Marketing Spend: Carefully reducing marketing spend at times to evaluate its impact on sales and margins. Only increasing spend when there were clear uplifts in contribution margin.
- Order-Level Profitability Tracking: Using StoreHero’s Order Level P+L to pinpoint and eliminate underperforming orders. StoreHero helped Walker & Hunt identify a pattern of unprofitable orders.
- Creative Performance Analysis: Employing the Creative Overview to identify and focus on high-performing marketing creatives.
- Reduced Costs: Reduced operating expenses that were unnecessary and that had crept up over time. Operating costs of the business as a % of net sales are down 29%.
“Prior to StoreHero, I now realised I lacked the confidence and clarity to scale the business profitably. The rising costs of ads is a challenge for all businesses, since onboarding with StoreHero I now make every decision with margin in mind and it’s been an absolute gamechanger.”
Luke Dully
Founder of Walker & Hunt
The Result
With real time reporting Walker & Hunt have almost doubled net profit (+97%) YoY since using StoreHero. Having a clear view to a real time P+L along with live contribution margin analysis meant that they could quickly spot emerging problems and double down on opportunities.
StoreHero, has saved Luke on average of 8 hours per week and he no longer had to rely on lots of different spreadsheets that constantly needed to be updated.
