Year One: Building a £1M Shopify Store from Scratch

In January 2023, a founder approached us with a product concept, a supplier relationship, and £80,000 in startup capital. They wanted to build a premium supplements brand targeting the endurance sports market — a category they knew intimately from 12 years of competitive cycling. By December 2023, the brand had hit £1.02M in revenue. This is the story of how we built it.

Phase 1: Foundation (Months 1–2)

Before a single line of code was written, we spent four weeks on brand strategy. Target audience definition, competitive positioning, price architecture, and channel strategy were all documented and agreed before the design process began. Too many startups skip this and end up with a beautiful site that speaks to no one in particular.

• Brand positioning: 'science-led, athlete-tested' supplements for endurance sport
• Target customer: recreational endurance athletes aged 28–45, household income £60k+
• Price architecture: £35–£65 per product, premium but accessible
• Primary channel: Meta paid social + SEO, with email as retention engine

Phase 2: Build (Months 2–3)

The Shopify store was built on a custom theme developed from our in-house starter template. Key features included an ingredient transparency section on each product page (listing every ingredient with its dose and evidence base), a performance-focused quiz, and a subscription model using Recharge for recurring revenue from day one.

The Subscription Model

Setting up subscriptions at launch, rather than adding them later, was a deliberate strategic choice. Acquiring a subscription customer costs the same as acquiring a one-time customer but generates significantly higher LTV. From the first month, we tracked subscription percentage as a primary KPI — targeting 30% of orders on subscription by month 6.

Phase 3: Launch and Acquisition (Months 3–6)

The launch strategy centred on a seed influencer campaign: 50 endurance athletes with between 5,000 and 50,000 followers each received a complimentary product package in exchange for honest review content. This seeded social proof before paid media launched and gave the Meta algorithm initial purchase event data to work with.

Phase 4: Scaling to £1M (Months 7–12)

The final push to £1M required two things: increasing paid media budget as ROAS held above 3.2x, and expanding into SEO-driven content to reduce paid dependency. We published 40 long-form articles in six months, targeting endurance nutrition keywords. By month 12, organic search contributed 18% of revenue.

• Month 12 revenue: £142,000
• Annual revenue: £1.02M
• Subscription customer LTV (12-month): £312 vs £68 for one-time buyers
• Blended CAC at year end: £21
• Email list: 28,000 subscribers with 42% open rate