35% Repeat Customers, And I Still Told This Brand to Ease Off Retention

A few weeks ago I was running a diagnostic for a knitwear ready-to-wear brand. 35% of their revenue came from customers who come back. The kind of number that feels good when you see it in a spreadsheet. The founder showed it to me a bit proud, and honestly, she earned it.

Except I hit her with something that caught her off guard. Be careful about pushing that number too high. Because past a certain threshold, in fashion, a retention rate that's too strong isn't a good sign. It's actually dangerous.

And the crazy part in her case is that she'd built almost nothing on the CRM side. Email flows barely started, one newsletter a week, and that's it. So 35% without doing anything means her base is carrying her. But it also means something else, and that's where it gets interesting.

The Sweet Spot Is 70% Acquisition, 30% Retention

What we tell our clients is roughly 70-30. 70% of your revenue coming from acquisition, new customers. 30% from customers who come back.

Below 30% recurring, that's not good. It means your base doesn't know you, doesn't come back, and every sale starts from zero. Above 30%, you're fine. Right in the norm. The knitwear brand at 35% is in good shape.

But where people get it wrong is thinking that the higher retention climbs, the better. At 40, at 50% recurring, you tell yourself great, my base is gold. In reality, it gets dangerous. Especially in fashion.

Because people don't come back forever. The pool of returning customers runs dry. And if you're not acquiring enough new customers alongside to refill it, that pool empties faster than you fill it. Eventually the curve flips. The revenue held up by your loyal customers starts to drop, and there's nobody new behind them to take over.

I've seen it before. A brand running hard on its base, pulling 50% of revenue from repeat buyers, and one day it's stone dry because the base aged and acquisition was never built. That's exactly the topic of a top-notch CRM can hide an acquisition engine that's dying.

In Fashion, Repeat Purchase Isn't the Same as in Cosmetics

Here you have to make a distinction by category, because it's not the same everywhere.

In cosmetics, wellness, on basic high-repeat products, a high retention rate is normal and healthy. You finish your cream, you buy another one. You finish your supplements, you reorder. There, having 50% or even more of your revenue recurring is the model itself. No need to panic.

In fashion, it's the opposite. You buy a sweater, you keep it. You don't rebuy the same sweater three months later. So a retention rate that's too strong in fashion can mean two things. Either you're squeezing your base dry with repeat promos, or you're not acquiring enough.

That said, in the knitwear brand's case, there's something worth looking at closely. Part of their catalog is basics. Timeless sweaters, the kind of piece a customer might rebuy in another color or replace when hers wears out. Those products generate repeat purchase that looks more like cosmetics than fashion. So before panicking over a global number, you need to go see where the repeat is coming from. Is it your basics turning over, or is it just promo on your loyal customers?

Something to keep in mind is that most of your repeat customers aren't even subscribed and slip through the cracks in your reporting. So that 35% might even be underestimated.

Why 35% Without a CRM Is Both an Opportunity and a Risk

Back to the case. 35% recurring with almost nothing done on the CRM side. Two readings.

The good news is the base is loyal. People love the brand, they come back on their own. That holds up even more given how little acquisition she's doing today. Of course her growth is being carried by people who already know her.

The risk is that the day she pushes acquisition to go chase growth, that 35% is going to drop mechanically. That's normal. You bring in a flood of new customers, the share of repeat buyers in the total shrinks. And that's where the challenge is keeping it above 30%. Not letting it slip away, but not artificially inflating it either.

Because the real goal isn't to have the highest possible retention rate. It's to have a healthy balance between a flow of new customers and a base that comes back. The CRM is there to hold that base while you push acquisition, not to replace acquisition.

For CRM, Aim for 50% Campaigns, 50% Flows

Now, concretely, how do you build this retention without falling into the all-promo trap.

The target we aim for is 50% of CRM revenue generated by campaigns, 50% by flows.

Campaigns are what you send manually. Newsletters, the editorial calendar, over email, SMS or WhatsApp. That's where the knitwear brand was already running one newsletter a week, so there's a base to build on.

Flows are the automation. The welcome flow when someone signs up, the sign-up pop-up on the site, abandoned carts. On their side, it was barely started. So a whole chunk of the CRM is asleep. And that's where there's room to grow without touching acquisition.

A brand with only campaigns and no flows is leaving money on the table every time a new visitor signs up and gets nothing afterward. And a brand running only flows with no editorial calendar doesn't exist in its customers' heads between two purchases.

First Thing, Protect Your Deliverability

But before building anything, there's a prerequisite everyone skips. Basic hygiene.

If you're sending emails to contacts that have been inactive for six months, you're sending negative signals to the mailbox providers. Gmail, Outlook and company. And little by little, you end up in spam. Even your active customers stop receiving anything in their primary inbox.

So you clean up. You stop sending to the dead. It's not sexy, but it's the foundation. Without it, all your beautiful flows and campaigns go nowhere.

The Migration Mistakes That Sink Everything

Last point, and I've seen it plenty of times. A badly handled tool migration.

On one case, a brand moved from Brevo to Klaviyo. On paper, good idea, Klaviyo is far ahead for fashion. In real life, the migration was a disaster. Flows left hanging, not rebuilt properly. Campaigns run by someone not trained on the tool. And worst of all, both tools kept running in parallel for several months.

Result, for months the CRM was running at half capacity. Broken flows, duplicate sends, deliverability taking a beating. All that for a tool change that was supposed to improve things.

The lesson is that the tool matters far less than the person running it and the rigor of the migration. You can have the best tool on the market, if it's badly migrated and badly managed, you're losing money. If you want to dig into how we get a fashion brand back on its feet when the machine seizes up, I talk about it in how we turn around a ready-to-wear brand.

What I'm Taking Away for the Knitwear Brand

35% recurring is good. We keep it above 30% when we go push acquisition, but above all we don't let it climb to 50% by drowning the base in promos.

The plan is clear. Clean the base to protect deliverability. Build the flows that are asleep, welcome, pop-up, abandoned carts. Keep the editorial calendar to hit the 50-50 campaigns-flows split. And in parallel, go chase acquisition, because that's what will fill the pool for the years to come.

Retention is a shock absorber, not an engine. In fashion, the day you confuse the two, your curve flips and you figure it out six months too late.