How We're Turning Around a Fashion Brand That Lost 75% of Its Online Revenue

A dress brand, average order value around €350. Two years ago it was doing €600,000 in online revenue. Last year, €150,000. A 75% drop. When you land on a case like this, everyone's first reflex is to say "we need to restart acquisition." That's almost never the right answer.

I'm going to walk you through how we look at a situation like this, what we found when we dug in, and the workstreams we prioritized. Because a brand that nosedives like that is rarely one single problem, it's everything breaking down at once.

Before you talk budget, you look at where it's actually bleeding

The first mistake when a brand loses 75% of its revenue is to jump straight to the campaigns. "We dropped, so let's put ad spend back in." No. Acquisition on its own doesn't work miracles. It can explain part of the drop, never all of it.

In this specific case, when we dug in, the causes were internal above all. Problems with the team. And most of all, a lot of stockouts. When you're out of stock, you mechanically sell zero of that product. You can throw all the ad money you want at it, if the dress isn't available, traffic lands on an empty product page and leaves. It's as simple as that.

So the first question is always the same. You need to know whether the problem is traffic, average order value, or conversion. Until you've answered that, you're flying blind. And in 80% of cases, the answer is in your numbers, not in your gut. That's why an eCommerce audit always starts with the P&L before touching the campaigns.

Here, an external operator was put on the case six months ago, three days a week. Her job, stabilize the business before thinking about growth.

The numbers-based diagnosis is where it all gets decided

When we looked at the KPIs, the thing that jumps out is the conversion rate. Between 0.25% and 0.5%. For a dress brand with an average order value of €350, that's a very low conversion rate ecommerce brands at this price point should never accept. Way too low.

The target we aim for is 0.9% minimum. And it's totally achievable given the average price. A customer putting €350 into a dress is qualified, she knows what she's looking for. If she converts at 0.3%, there's a friction point somewhere in the journey or in the offer.

Traffic itself is stable, slightly growing. But not qualified enough. The distinction matters. You've got people coming in, but they're not necessarily the right people, or they land on pages that don't sell. Growing traffic without fixing conversion just means paying more for the same sales.

One thing's going well in this story, the repeat rate. Customers who buy a dress come back easily. That means the product is good and the loyalty is there. When retention holds, you've got a healthy base to rebuild on. The problem is at the top of the funnel and on product availability. The product is good, it's not the issue.

Three friction points and one asset, then: conversion on the floor, poorly qualified traffic, bleeding stock, but a loyal customer base.

Until you've got this picture in front of you, you can't prioritize. With this picture, the workstreams become obvious.

The workstreams, in order

Get the team back on its feet

Before talking acquisition or CRM, you need a team that runs. Right now the structure is one junior person on the eCom side, four to five days a week. Resourceful, curious, but who's never worked in digital. One person on content creation handling the newsletter and social. One person on admin. And Emma, the founder, on the collection and production.

It's a small team. That's not a problem in itself, plenty of brands run on that. The issue is splitting the roles well and upskilling the junior on digital, because she's the one running the shop day to day. A team restructuring has been launched, and that's the kind of thing that takes time but conditions everything else.

Kill the stockouts

The dumbest workstream on the list. It's also the one that pays off fastest. Every dress out of stock is revenue you lose without even seeing it. Getting the best-selling models back in stock pays off immediately. Nothing clever here, just discipline on stock and production lead times.

Fix the offer

This is the real underlying issue, and I'll come back to it right after.

The result of these six months of cleanup is +50% growth. That's good, it's encouraging. But let's be honest, we're still a long way from historic levels. Going from 150K to 225K is a restart, not a finished turnaround. What comes next is decided on the offer and on conversion.

Stop chasing the fashion calendar

And here there's a real decision to make.

The brand operated like a classic fashion player. One big collection in September, one big one in March, modeled on the industry calendar. The problem with this model is that you bet everything on newness. And when the numbers aren't good on the new drops, you're forced to run promos all the time to clear stock. And by running promos to clear stock, you eat into your margin month after month.

The shift to make is moving from a collection model to a brand model. Concretely, you build a core of permanents, basics, timeless pieces. Dresses that sell all year round, that are always in stock, and that you can push continuously without depending on a launch.

On top of this core, you drive excitement with a few small launches. New prints, new models, every two months. Lighter, more frequent. It keeps newness alive without making the whole business dependent on one big collection twice a year.

Another effect, on acquisition. The classic mistake is to communicate about new arrivals to people who don't know the brand. For someone who's never heard of you, pushing a new arrival means nothing. In pure acquisition, you communicate about your best-sellers, the models that have already proven themselves. The new stuff, you push in retargeting and newsletter, to people who already know you and who want to see what you're releasing.

That's exactly how we hit months at +50 or +60% growth at full price on other brands. You communicate about what sells, you keep the new stuff for people already in your base.

Conversion and CRM

Once stock is sorted and the offer rethought, the big workstream is conversion. Going from 0.3% to 0.9%, on this traffic, triples revenue without spending a single extra euro on ads. That's where I'd put the energy.

Concretely, the product pages, the content, the photos. In eCommerce, a customer judges on the photo first and foremost. She doesn't have the dress in hand, she has an image on a screen. If the photo isn't good, the product can be excellent, it won't convert. The checkout, the translations if you sell internationally, the cart page. The whole journey that makes a customer qualified at €350 either complete her order or abandon it.

Then CRM, because the repeat rate is already good. A base of loyal customers who buy again is worth a lot. You work them through newsletter, you show them new arrivals in preview, you bring them back without paying for acquisition every time. The digital channel and CRM are the real engine of recovery when the base is healthy.

What makes sense given the brand's stage is not to slap on a scale strategy when you've just climbed out of the red. The strategy that restarts you is the one you'll throw out when you're aiming for 10M. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Where the case stands today

Six months in, we're at +50%, 225K projected for the year. The junior is upskilling on digital, stockouts are getting less frequent, and the team is starting to hold the day-to-day without everything resting on Emma.

The real turning point is coming now. The next launch is being built on the new model, a core of permanents we push continuously and two or three new arrivals on top to keep the desire alive. That's where we'll see if the shift really takes.

Honestly, we're not out of the woods yet. We're halfway there. But for the first time in two years, the curve is climbing back up, and we know exactly why.