Walker and Hunt Increase Net Profit +97% with StoreHero

Home » Walker and Hunt Increased Net Profit +97% with StoreHero

Customer: Walker and Hunt
Industry: Menswear
Features Used: Order Level P+L, Store Overview, and Contribution Margin Analysis
Location: Ireland

increase in Sales

increase in Contribution Margin

increase in Net Profit

saved Per Week

"StoreHero has helped with everything from automating our 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 important decisions. Ecommerce is a numbers game masquerading itself as a marketing exercise"

Luke Dully

Founder of Walker & Hunt

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.