I work with D2C and marketplace brands past their first million or two in run rate, at the point where growth plateaus, acquisition gets more expensive every month, or nobody can agree on which channel or market comes next. Fifteen-plus years doing this inside brands, hands-on.
A result without the baseline, the timeframe and whose job it was is just a number. These come with all three.
Reporting to the CEO as the men’s skincare brand grew from startup to $20M+. The whole mix, not one channel: Meta, YouTube creators, lifecycle, and the Amazon business below.
Growth lead, reporting to the CEO · 5 yearsOne hero SKU doing 95% of sales, ad spend parked on branded terms, TACoS climbing. Rebuilt the keyword portfolio, merchandising, deals, forecasting and demand gen, then rolled the playbook into Canada, Europe and Mexico. Double-digit TACoS reduction and record contribution margin.
Owned the Amazon P&L end to end · 2 yearsYouTube was saturating as a direct-response channel. Repositioned it as full-funnel demand gen, priced creators on measured halo lift in branded search, direct and organic, and automated sourcing and contracting. Spend reached seven figures. Total ad cost as a share of revenue went down. Record EBITDA efficiency.
Owned paid media and the creator programMost of the budget was stuck in learning: too many near-identical ads, launched sporadically, with no feedback loop. Calibrated the launch cadence, tagged every ad by customer problem and format, consolidated the account and rebalanced education against offers. In-platform ROAS looked worse for a while. Blended new-customer CAC fell and new-customer volume rose, which is what reaches the P&L.
Fractional growth leadMost engagements start the same way: the P&L, the guardrails, the channel spending the most money. Where they go from there depends on what you hired me for.
For founders and CEOs whose biggest channel has stopped scaling, or whose numbers don’t agree with each other.
Retainer from $5K/month · 1–3 months
Amazon first, then Walmart, TikTok Shop and international marketplaces, run off the same playbook.
Retainer from $5K/month · 1–3 months
One hour on one problem. Bring the numbers and I’ll tell you what I see.
$500 / hour
For SaaS teams building for Shopify, Amazon or marketing teams. Feedback from the person who’d be buying it.
$500 / hour
I don’t do a lot of analysis for its own sake. The point is to get the full picture fast and start solving the problem I was brought in for.
A brand had ruled out shipping into Canada because an early trial produced bad reviews. The data said something else: the badly reviewed SKU was a 1.0 version with the same complaints in the US, and it happened to be the one selling in Canada. Not a marketplace problem. A SKU distribution problem. That changes the question from “should we go” to “which products go.”
At a $30M+ shower filter brand spending heavily on Meta, most of the budget was stuck in learning. Too many near-identical ads launched too sporadically, with no feedback loop. We calibrated the launch cadence, tagged every ad by customer problem and format, consolidated the structure for that account, and rebalanced education against offer ads. In-platform ROAS looked worse for a while. Blended new-customer CAC went down and new-customer volume went up, which is the number that reaches the P&L.
At a men’s skincare brand, the easiest incremental win on Amazon wasn’t a new channel at all. It was the same playbook, rerun in Europe through Pan-EU, where competition was thinner and most of the tax and logistics groundwork already existed. The path of least resistance is usually a proven playbook in a new market, not a new playbook in the same one.
Client examples are described by category and scale, not by name.
A plateaued Amazon channel with one hero SKU and inflated branded spend, rebuilt into a $6M+ growth engine in two years.
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A closed-loop Meta system at Breath Death that ties ad testing, landing-page optimization and creative archetypes…
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Repositioning YouTube from a saturating direct-response channel into full-funnel demand gen that scaled influencer…
Read the case study →“Tom is, without a doubt, the best communicator I’ve encountered in business.”
“He challenged my thinking and added net new value — that’s rare in this space.”
“Working with a good strategist that knows the platforms and is ready to pull levers is rare — but required for brands that want to grow today.”
Brands I’ve worked with
Hands-on growth lead for D2C and marketplace brands. Strategic and in the ad account.
Crafts scroll-stopping visuals that actually convert.
Turns Shopify storefronts into efficient, high-converting funnels.
Architect behind fast, reliable sites and high-impact custom development.
A free 20-minute intro call. Bring the numbers. I’ll tell you plainly whether I can help, and where I’d look first.
The seven tabs of the financial model I build for a consumer brand before the deck: assumptions, P&L by channel, unit…
A data room checklist for consumer brands: three tiers of access, the twelve folders, the D2C questions investors ask before…
A department split tells an investor who gets paid. The use of funds slide I build for a consumer brand splits the raise by…
DirectToGrowth Co.