The Operator Newsletter
I grew a DTC brand to $4.2M ARR.
Here's what I learned.
I'm Stephen Mercer. I scaled a DTC brand from a Shopify store to $4.2M ARR over four years, bootstrapped, no VC. Every week I write about the operational side of scaling DTC: retention, cash flow, email, and hiring.
Join 3,200+ DTC founders
Weekly essays on retention, cash flow, and operational leverage. Free.
Topics
Email & Retention
Sequences, win-backs, lifecycle flows
Cash Flow
Inventory financing, working capital
Team & Hiring
Building without a VC war chest
Ads & Acquisition
What worked, what burned the budget
Recent essays
All articles →The 3-Email Abandoned Cart Sequence That Recovered $180K Last Year
Most brands send one abandoned cart email. Here's the exact 3-email sequence, timing, subject lines, and copy hooks, that drove 8% recovery rate on $2.2M in abandoned carts.
How We Financed $300K of Q4 Inventory Without a Bank Loan
Banks won't touch you until you're past $5M. Here's the revenue-based financing, supplier terms, and PO financing strategies that kept us stocked through our biggest quarter.
The Retention Mistake That Was Costing Us 30% of Potential Revenue
We were obsessed with CAC and ignored retention. When we finally ran the numbers, our second-purchase rate was 18%, 9 points below industry average. Here's what we fixed.
The Operator Newsletter
Weekly essays on retention, cash flow, and operational leverage for DTC founders. No fluff. No courses to sell you. Just what works.