How Create Scaled From $0 to $4.5M in One Year
Dan McCormick co-founded Create in December 2022 to address a unique opportunity in the supplement market. Having personally benefited from creatine for over a decade, he observed a mismatch between its positive effects and public perception. Recognizing creatine's safety and efficacy, he saw the potential to reposition this underutilized supplement, in the form of creatine gummies. Dan believes that almost anyone can benefit from proper creatine supplementation; however, the lack of suitable marketing strategies and product formats has hindered its broader adoption. Create was founded to change this narrative and introduce the benefits of creatine to a wider audience.
Alongside his role at Create, Dan contributes to "Not Boring", a newsletter focused on business and technology strategies. Specifically, Dan writes the "Weekly Dose of Optimism," a Friday edition that highlights five stories promoting human progress and optimism about the future. You can follow his journey here.
Challenge
Before starting Create, Dan gained a wealth of experience from his tenure working for large direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies like Away and Parade. These roles provided him with an in-depth understanding of the power and necessity of comprehensive data analytics in driving business decisions. At these companies, fully developed data and analytics teams (armed with tools like Looker) offered Dan a deep dive into business insights, fostering a data-driven approach to ecommerce.
When starting Create, Dan recognized the need for a different approach to data analytics. Although Create wouldn't need the sophisticated systems and teams of larger organizations, the desire for clear visibility into the business was paramount. This understanding was crucial, as Create was launching into a competitive market where data-driven decisions could significantly impact growth and market penetration.
“At Away and Parade, we had fully built out data and analytics teams and systems and tools. So, I kind of became addicted to that level of visibility and analysis. And I knew that when I started Create, We weren't going to need that level of sophistication, but I still really craved visibility into my business.” Dan McCormick, Co-Founder and CEO
Solution
During the months leading up to Create's launch, Dan closely followed the evolving landscape of ecommerce attribution and analytics. Influenced by respected voices in the industry, he decided that Triple Whale was the most suitable solution for his new venture.
Triple Whale stood out as an efficient, user-friendly option that offered the necessary insights without the complexity and resource intensity of larger systems. Its one-click integrations and comprehensive dashboard provided the right balance of sophistication and usability for a startup like Create. This decision reflected a proactive strategy to equip Create with a robust, scalable analytics solution right from its inception, ensuring a data-informed path to growth and success.
Dan has been using Triple Whale for almost a year. When asked about his experience with Triple Whale, he stated, “I'm still addicted to it, and I find myself checking it every seven minutes or so.” Let’s explore some of the key ways Dan uses Triple Whale.
Create heavily relies on Triple Whale's Summary Dashboard for the daily monitoring of key metrics and business health.
- Total Business Net Revenue: A combination of Shopify and Amazon sales, refined by deducting discounts, returns, and refunds.
- Blended Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): An overarching view of total spend across all channels, including Amazon.
- Contribution Margin: A measure of gross margin minus ad spend, providing a snapshot of financial health.
- Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER): The percent of revenue that is being spent on advertising. Serves as a primary indicator for assessing Create's business health, balancing top-line growth with profitability and effective ad spending.
By balancing sales growth with contribution margin, Create ensures their marketing strategies are both aggressive and sustainable.
Triple Whale’s Pixel Page provides real-time clarity on attribution and orders.
- Real-time order feed: Utilizing the Pixel page for a live feed of orders and understanding their marketing touch points prior to purchase.
- Channel Performance Evaluation: Gauging the efficiency of various channels in real-time.
- High-Level Attribution Strategy: While prioritizing channels like Facebook for scalability, Dan also values insights into organic traffic patterns.
Create utilizes the Triple Whale’s Customer Cohorts to track customer behavior over time.
- Utilization of Customer Cohorts: Tracking first-order revenue and monitoring spending patterns over time, providing insights into the life time value and behavior of different customer segments.
- Customer Acquisition Costs: Comparing the CAC to LTV of specific cohorts provides clarity into the profitability of key customer segments.
"I've become addicted to the level of visibility and analysis you're able to do when you have something like a fully implemented Looker instance and data analysts working at your behest. With Triple Whale, it's like having that level of insight and control, but tailored for where Create is at. It’s about getting that 80/20—getting the most impactful insights with one-click integrations and a full dashboard that’s super compelling for our business." Dan McCormick, Co-Founder and CEO
“I have all the acquisition and marketing metrics that I can drill down into. It comes down to how can we drive top line as much as possible while maintaining healthy contribution margin. And a lot goes into that, but those are kind of the two things I'm optimizing for is how can we sell as much product as possible and profitably”
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