Lucky In Love: From wholesale-only to a seven-figure DTC engine in 2 years

Client Challenges‍

• No DTC revenue stream. Zero e-commerce infrastructure, budget model, or demand plan.
• Channel conflict management. Grow DTC while protecting wholesale, avoiding price wars, and supporting retailers with co-op assets.
• Category sprawl. Tennis, Golf, and Kids competed for attention with no clear leader, role, or growth thesis.
• Audience + content gap. Instagram was templated and low-impact; no influencer program, no lifecycle marketing.
• Competitive pressure: giants (Nike/Adidas) flooding paid channels; CPC inflation; noisy creator space.
• No testing cadence. Busy activity without a system for learning, creative iteration, or channel roles.

Strategy (the operating system I installed)

1) Commercial model first: forecast, P&L, guardrails

• Built a 24-month revenue model and launch P&L with explicit CAC (cost-per-acquisition), ROAS (return-on-ad-spend) and marketing spend/revenue ratio targets.
• Set a marketing investment envelope by channel (Meta, Search, Creator, Lifecycle).
• Instituted a single scorecard: Revenue, CAC/ROAS, Returning Customer Rate, Return Rate - ending vanity metrics.

2) Category & merch strategy (stop the sprawl)

• Tennis = hero (distinctive design, frequent capsules, creative rotation).
• Golf = selective expansion (fewer, higher-margin capsules; “club culture” stories).
• Kids = brand halo (bundle logic, gifting; 'community' story).
• Built a site merchandising cadence (homepage/product pages refresh, web exclusives, new-in rhythm) so content actually sells.

3) Brand Platform Reinforcement

• Position to own & promise: Tennis-to-Street - from court performance to street style. Athlete-credible, fashion-desirable; this is the competitive territory we claim.
• Aspirational signature of place: Miami-born, American Riviera - a defensible code (light/heat palette, resort-sport culture, editorial styling) competitors can’t authentically copy.
• Codify & prove: Stamp “Miami-born” across capsules; show court-and-city looks; use the message "From the court to the street".

4) Channel architecture (what each channel must do)

• Paid Ads: Prospect → Retarget → Harvest. Meta built awareness with hook-led creative; warm retargeting carries proof/offer; Google Search/Shopping captures in-market intent (guardrails: ~60/40 prospecting-to-warm).
• Social & creators fuel the funnel: giveaways with drop rituals (tease → launch → sustain); creator micro-teams (athlete + club coach + lifestyle creators) produce assets that also win in paid and social.
• Athlete collaboration compresses consideration: Bethanie Mattek-Sands capsule (brief → content → landing) turns authority into add-to-cart and assisted conversions across paid/email/PDP.
• Email & automation convert and compound: welcome, browse/cart abandon, post-purchase, winback; plus drop waitlists/VIP early access tied to the capsule calendar to improve payback and repeat.

5) Community Marketing

• Platform. As a family business, we needed an authentic community identity. #TheLuckyFam- conceived by Marina -became the organizing idea aligning employees, athletes, creators, brand ambassadors, and customers.
• Social propagation. We codified #TheLuckyFam as the social architecture of every capsule - shared prompts, visual cues, and usage norms -so ambassadors and influencers adopted the tag across Instagram, creating a coherent, compounding stream of on-brand UGC.
• Loyalty layer. We institutionalized #TheLuckyFam as participation-based loyalty - recognizing contribution (UGC, reviews, referrals) alongside purchases with early access and selective exclusives - turning belonging into durable retention.

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Results

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