FERNWAY GOODS · OUTDOOR GEAR, SOLD DIRECT
Maya Okafor — Growth
Dana Whitfield — Lifecycle
Rob Calloway — Fractional CMO
Channels · Efficiency · Father's Day readout · Email & retention · Brand heat · The July plan
Best non-holiday month we've ever had — and the most expensive one since November.
+14.2% YoY · +9.4% MoM
May: 4.4× · Target: ≥4.0×
Up $3 MoM. Not fine — see the CAC page.
of revenue · target 30%
Father's Day did what we built it to do: $438K on $92K of spend, and our first $60K single day outside of Q4. Efficiency paid for it — Meta CPMs rose 11% into the gifting auction and we kept feeding the TikTok scaling test, so blended CAC climbed to $46 against a $48 first-order contribution margin. That gap is now the whole ballgame, and every bet on the July page exists to widen it.
Email share stalled at 28.1% (target 30) — campaign sends flat while flows grew. And the founder video flopped at a $57 CPA. Both get fixed in July, not admired.
Paid media only ($K). Email/SMS is owned, not bought — it gets its own page.
+11% MoM — all of it deliberate
in paid-attributed revenue
ROAS is directional. MER is gospel. We allocate from MER — we don't celebrate channel math.
| Channel | Spend | Attributed rev | ROAS | Rev MoM | The call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta | $224.8K | $645K | 2.9× | +7% | CPMs +11% into the gifting auction; held frequency at 2.1 |
| $118.7K | $402K | 3.4× | +5% | Brand + PMax; brand terms now 31% of channel revenue | |
| TikTok | $56.2K | $128K | 2.3× | +24% | Scaling test — spend +34% MoM, efficiency isn't there yet |
| Affiliate | $12.3K | $41K | 3.3× | +2% | Steady; onboarded two gear-review partners mid-month |
| Email / SMS | $21.4K* | $489K | — | +18% | *Tooling cost, not media. Owned channel — full story on the email page |
TikTok is buying reach, not orders — yet. We're paying a learning tax on purpose, and July decides whether it graduates or gets cut to test budget.
Kill TikTok tomorrow and blended CAC drops to ~$41. We're not doing it — but we know the price of the bet.
Trailing 12 months, dollars per order. The lines converging is the story.
CM $48.20 − CAC $46.10. Thinnest since BFCM.
We roughly break even on the first order now. Payback rides on the second one — that's why the email page and July bets 1–2 outrank any ROAS number here.
Stage widths on a log scale so all four stages stay visible; labels carry the true volumes.
| Creative | Format | Spend | CTR | CPA | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dad's Actual Wishlist | UGC listicle · Reels + TikTok | $24.6K | 3.4% | $31 | Scale |
| Last-Chance Shipping Cutoff | Urgency statics · Meta | $11.9K | 2.8% | $26 | Re-run in Q4 |
| Built for the Guy Who Fixes Everything | Carousel · Meta | $18.2K | 1.9% | $44 | Keep |
| Father's Day Gift Guide | Catalog / DPA · retargeting | $21.5K | 1.6% | $49 | Keep — RT only |
| The Fernway Dad Test | Founder video · all placements | $15.8K | 2.6% | $57 | Killed day 9 |
Customers selling to customers beat us selling to customers. "Dad's Actual Wishlist" took 41% of campaign orders at a $31 CPA.
The founder video we loved internally clicked well and converted badly. $15.8K of tuition. Killed on day 9.
Monthly revenue by program type ($K), January–June. Flows are the compounding line.
+81% since January — the post-purchase rebuild is paying rent
net new subscribers · SMS now 31% of owned revenue
The stall: 11 of 14 planned campaign sends — Father's Day ate the calendar. That's the whole gap to the 30% target.
Share of branded search among the three of us, trailing 12 months. Leading indicator, not revenue.
+2.5pts MoM — first month within 3pts of Ridgeline
Some of this spike is the Father's Day media halo, not durable brand pull. We'll trust the July number more than the June one — if we hold above 37% with spend back to baseline, it's real.
| The bet | The June learning behind it | Owner | Budget | We're right if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shift $30K of TikTok prospecting into creator whitelisting | Brand-account TikTok stuck at 2.3× while whitelisted creator posts doubled its hook rate | Maya | $45K | TikTok CAC ≤ $52 by Jul 31, or we cut to test budget |
| Post-purchase flow v2 — 30/60/90 gear-care series | June cohort second-order rate tracking 11% vs 14% last year; payback now rides the second order | Dana | — | 60-day repeat rate back to ≥ 14% for the July cohort |
| Split PMax by margin tier | PMax took 38% of Google conversions but only 22% of contribution margin — it's feasting on accessories | Maya | reallocation | Google CM per order +$4 with spend flat |
| Prime Day counter-program, Jul 8–11 — full price, free repairs-for-life push | June sold through at full price; last July's 20% sitewide discount bought revenue we paid back all quarter | Rob | $28K | Hold MER ≥ 3.8 through Prime week with zero sitewide discount |
Review cadence: bets 1 and 3 get a kill/scale call on July 18; bets 2 and 4 run the full month. August's version of this page opens with the scorecard.
Same report, next month's numbers. Bets 1 and 3 get their kill/scale call on July 18 — if you hold an opinion, bring it to the Monday standup before then.
Order ledger (Shopify) · ad platforms · Klaviyo · search-console + third-party volume blend. All figures deduped against orders.
marketing@fernwaygoods.com — or comment directly on the page.
July's report drops August 4.
FERNWAY GOODS · FIELD REPORT № 30