Every founder I talk to wants the same thing in the first ten minutes: a number to compare themselves against. Is my CAC too high. Is my repeat rate good. Is my payback normal. The instinct is right. The trouble is that almost every benchmark floating around the internet blends categories that have nothing in common, so a supplements founder ends up measuring themselves against apparel math and panics for no reason.
So I built a card. It is the reference I keep in my head when an operator describes their business, and it is organized the only way these numbers make sense, by category. A supplements brand and a furniture brand are not in the same game. Their customers buy on different rhythms, their order values sit a decimal place apart, and their payback windows are built on completely different assumptions.
Take everything here as directional. These are pattern-reading ranges, not audited figures, and the spread inside any single category is wider than the gap between categories. Use the card to form a hypothesis, then go read your own numbers honestly.
How to actually
use a benchmark
card like this.
A benchmark is a question, not an answer. When your number lands outside the range on this card, the useful response is not "fix it" or "ignore it." It is "why." A repeat rate below your category usually points at product or post-purchase, not at your ads. A CAC above your category might be fine if your order value and repeat rate are also above it. The card only earns its keep when you read the four metrics together.
The four I track on every brand are the four on this card. Acquisition cost, what it costs to land a customer. Order value, what they spend the first time. Repeat rate, whether they come back. And payback, how long until that customer has returned the cash you spent to get them. Those four describe the engine. Everything else is detail hanging off them.
One rule before you read the numbers: a healthy brand does not need to beat the card on every line. It needs the four numbers to fit together. A low order value is fine if customers reorder constantly. A high acquisition cost is fine if the order value and repeat rate are high enough to pay it back fast. The card shows category-typical combinations. Your job is to make your own four numbers form a coherent story, not to win every row.
The card itself.
Screenshot it.
Then read on.
Here it is, the whole point of the piece. Five categories, four metrics each, all directional. AOV is average first order value. Repeat rate is the rough share of customers who buy again within the first year. Payback is the typical window to recover acquisition cost on a blended basis.
| Category | CAC / AOV | Repeat rate | CAC payback |
|---|---|---|---|
Supplements | CAC $40–$80 · AOV $50–$90 | High, 40–60% | Fast, 1–3 months |
Beauty / skincare | CAC $25–$60 · AOV $40–$70 | Medium-high, 30–50% | Fast, 2–4 months |
Apparel | CAC $25–$50 · AOV $60–$120 | Medium, 20–35% | Medium, 4–8 months |
Food / beverage | CAC $30–$70 · AOV $35–$60 | High, 40–60% | Medium, 3–6 months |
Home / durables | CAC $40–$120 · AOV $90–$250 | Low, 10–20% | Slow, single order |
That is the card. Notice it does not give you a single CAC number, because a single number would be a lie. It gives you CAC next to the order value that has to justify it, which is the only way the figure means anything.
Reading the rows
the way an
operator would.
Supplements and food are the consumable categories, and the card shows it. High repeat rates, fast payback, because the product runs out and the customer comes back on a predictable clock. That rhythm is why those categories can stomach a higher acquisition cost relative to order value: the second, third, and fourth orders are where the brand actually makes its money. If you run a consumable and your repeat rate is below the range, that is a product or post-purchase problem, and no amount of ad spend fixes it.
Beauty sits close behind, with replenishment driving repeat but slightly more one-and-done risk than a true consumable. Apparel is the middle of the deck: decent order value, medium repeat, a payback window that stretches because customers buy on seasons and moods, not on a schedule. Home and durables are the outlier. High order value, low repeat, and often a single-purchase business where you must recover acquisition cost on the first order or not at all.
The home row is the one founders misread most. They see a high order value and assume the economics are easy. They are not. When a customer buys a sofa once and never again, your entire model rests on first-order contribution. That is a completely different discipline from a supplements brand that can lose money on order one and clean up on the reorder. I get into why these windows diverge in CAC payback by vertical.
Consumables forgive a slow first order. Durables do not. If you sell something people buy once, you have to win on the first transaction. If you sell something they reorder, you can be patient on order one and ruthless about retention. Confusing the two is how brands set the wrong CAC ceiling and either starve growth or buy unprofitable customers.
"A single CAC benchmark would be a lie. The number only means something next to the order value that has to justify it and the repeat rate that pays it back."
If your numbers sit outside your category's row, the question is why, not whether to panic. The form takes two minutes.
Where a card
like this quietly
lies to you.
Benchmarks flatten everything that makes your business specific. Two supplements brands in the same range can have completely different futures because one sells a daily product and the other sells a thirty-day cleanse people do once. The card cannot see that. It also cannot see your margin, which is the number that actually decides whether your CAC is affordable. A $60 acquisition cost is a triumph at 70 percent contribution margin and a disaster at 25.
The repeat-rate figures are the softest numbers on the card. Repeat behavior depends heavily on how you count it, what window you use, and whether you include subscription customers. I deliberately kept these ranges wide because a tight number here would imply a precision that does not exist. Treat the repeat column as "high, medium, or low for the category," not as a target to hit to the decimal.
And the biggest distortion of all: lifetime value assumptions. Half the brands quoting a glorious payback window are leaning on an LTV figure that bakes in years of repeat purchases that have not happened yet. The card sidesteps that by anchoring payback to recovering acquisition cost, not to some projected lifetime. If you want to see how the LTV story gets inflated, I take it apart in the LTV math brands get wrong.
Building the only
card that really
matters: yours.
This reference card is the warm-up. The real exercise is building your own, with your actual numbers, refreshed every quarter. Pull your blended acquisition cost, your true first-order value, your one-year repeat rate, and your honest payback window. Write them next to the category range. Where you beat the range, understand why so you can protect it. Where you trail it, decide whether it is a problem to fix or a deliberate trade you are making.
The brands I have watched compound all do a version of this. They know their four numbers cold, they know how those numbers move when they push spend, and they never confuse the industry average with their own truth. The average is a crowd. Your card is your business.
Do one more thing the generic benchmarks never tell you to do: segment your own card by acquisition channel and by cohort. Your blended CAC hides a healthy channel subsidizing a bad one. Your blended repeat rate hides a great cohort propping up a weak one. Once you split the card that way, you stop managing to an average and start managing to the parts of the business that actually pay you back. That is the difference between a founder who quotes benchmarks and an operator who runs the math, and it is what pairs naturally with knowing your contribution margin cold.
Screenshot the card, then go build your own. If you want a second set of eyes on whether your numbers are healthy for your category, start with payback by vertical, then tell me about your brand and I will tell you which row you really live in.
Read your numbers against the right card.
I help DTC brands figure out whether their metrics are healthy for their category, not the average. Co-founded WIN Brands Group across multiple verticals, sold getuptime.co to Tiny. I have seen the spread inside categories, not just the headline averages.
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