A DTC growth consultant who has actually run the brands.
I co-founded WIN Brands Group, the acquirer behind Homesick and Qalo, and have advised Fortune 500 consumer-goods teams, including Nike, Coca-Cola, Hallmark, and P&G. I was an early Shopify employee who helped build and scale the Partner Program before any of that. Founders hire me for that operator judgment, not more hands to execute. My clients are mostly consumer brands between $5M and $100M-plus in revenue. A typical engagement runs $10,000 to $15,000 a month with a weekly call, and retainers start at $6,000.
DTC means direct-to-consumer: a brand that sells to its own customers through its own store, not only through retailers. A DTC consultant is a senior operator who works on the decisions that set that brand's growth (margin, channel mix, retention, and when to add wholesale or retail) and leaves execution to the team and its agencies. The agencies run the channels, and the consultant decides which of them deserve the budget.
Founders past $5M, where the old playbook quietly stops working.
Now I work as a fractional DTC growth consultant to founders scaling from $5M toward $100M and beyond. I sell an operator's judgment on the decisions that move the P&L, where an agency sells more execution.
I work across the consumer category: direct-to-consumer and ecommerce brands, CPG and retail, and subscription businesses, on Shopify and beyond. What they share is an inflection point: the moves that got you here stop compounding, and a wrong next decision gets expensive. If revenue is growing but profit is not, if CAC keeps climbing, or if the org has outgrown the way it was built, the help worth paying for comes from someone who has stood in that spot and run the P&L out the other side.
Founder-led brands · $5M to $25M
Pushing through the walls that come at $5M and $10M: CAC discipline, channel mix, retention and repeat rate, and getting contribution margin to a place that compounds instead of bleeds. I've run those numbers myself, as an operator.
Scaling brands · $25M to $100M+
The harder problems of scale: retail and wholesale expansion, operating systems that survive growth without wrecking margin, category defense, and getting the business ready to raise, sell, or hold, which is work most consultants have never done.
Another agency probably won't fix a judgment problem.
Most brands past $5M are already paying two or three agencies. When growth stalls, the instinct is to add a fourth, or to hire a full-time VP. Both are expensive ways to add capacity to what is usually a judgment problem. An agency runs channels for you, and a full-time leader costs $30,000 to $45,000 or more a month fully loaded, before a six-to-twelve-month ramp and the real chance you have to hire twice. Before asking whether you can afford a VP, ask whether you have forty hours a week of that work, or ten hours of the judgment trapped behind it.
| Your situation | The right tool | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You don't know what to do next | Fractional advisor | Senior judgment on the few calls that move the business |
| You know what to do, need hands | Agency or junior hire | Execution capacity once the strategy is set |
| A whole function, all day, ongoing | Full-time hire | True forty-hour ownership the business can't run without |
Consultant vs agency vs fractional CMO vs full-time VP: 2026 costs
In 2026 US dollars, a full-time VP of growth runs $30,000 to $45,000 or more a month fully loaded, a fractional CMO $12,000 to $22,000, and a DTC growth agency $15,000 to $50,000 plus a share of media, with creative and landing pages billed on top. My Advisory tier is $10,000 to $15,000 a month for a weekly call with me.
| Option | Monthly cost | What you get | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time VP of growth | $30,000 to $45,000 or more, fully loaded | All of one person's hours, owning a whole function, plus the team of 2 to 12 people they usually build | Packages run about $290k for a VP of Growth, $325k for a VP of Marketing and $400k or more for a CMO, before benefits. The team they build to execute takes the in-house cost to roughly $60,000 to $200,000 a month. Add a recruiter fee, a six-to-twelve-month ramp, and the real chance you hire twice |
| Fractional CMO | $12,000 to $22,000 | Usually ten hours a week, scoped to marketing or sales | Board-level scope and revenue accountability sit at the top of that band |
| DTC growth agency | $15,000 to $50,000 retainer, plus a share of media, with creative and landing pages billed on top | A team running your channels | The advice and the invoice come from the same firm, so the plan tends to call for more execution |
| Boutique strategy consultancy | $200 to $500 an hour | Project work, scoped by the hour | Two weeks of it runs $16,000 to $40,000, delivered by whoever was free that fortnight |
| My Advisory tier | $10,000 to $15,000 | A 60-minute call with me every week, Slack between calls, and the models we decide from, which I build and keep current | A twelve-month term, then sixty days' written notice either side. No team and no execution revenue, so the person on the call is always me |
Under $5M, Consulting at $6,000 a month, with a call every two weeks, is usually the better fit. Every tier and term is on the engagements page.
I wrote the full breakdown, with the cost math and the failure modes of each option, in fractional advisor vs agency vs a full-time hire. An advisor is the wrong tool plenty of the time, and I'll tell you on the first call when it is. If you are running a real selection process, the sequence I would want you to run on me is in how to choose an ecommerce growth advisor.
Four places the constraint usually hides.
The deliverable changes from client to client while the thinking stays the same, and the work clusters in a few places. If you want a feel for how I read a brand before we ever talk, the DTC profitability calculator and max allowable CAC calculator run the same first-pass math I start with.
Unit economics & profit
Your true contribution margin, and a path to growth that adds profit along with top line. The work behind the DTC profitability teardown and the inflection points.
Channel mix & acquisition
Fixing the channel mix and getting CAC and payback under control, from Meta versus Google to owned audience, retail media, and the shift off rented reach. Then what the traffic lands on, because the elements on a product page that are actually proven decide whether a click you paid for converts.
Brand, retail & expansion
Brand architecture and the move into retail, wholesale, and marketplaces without losing the margin or the brand that got you here, including the own store versus marketplace call.
M&A: buy, sell, or hold
When to scale, when to take profit, when to sell, and how to get ready. I co-founded a nine-figure acquirer and sold my own company, so I have sat on both sides of the table.
If one of those four sounded like your last two quarters, you already have the only input I need. Name it and I will tell you on the first call whether it is the real constraint or a symptom of a different one.
A direct conversation first, without the long pitch.
30-minute call
Free, and there is no deck: we talk through where you are, where you're going, and whether there's a real fit.
The Read
Two weeks, fixed fee. Your numbers, your team, and your own account of the problem, handed back as a written read on what is true and what to do first. Credited back if you sign a tier within 30 days.
Pick a tier
Consulting, Advisory, or Partner, from $6,000 a month. Most brands at this stage sit in Advisory: a weekly call, Slack, and shared models, often with a quarterly week on the ground. Brands under $5M usually start in Consulting.
Hand off
Engagements end when the ROI stops compounding or the team has internalized the patterns. I would rather finish the work than keep a standing meeting on the calendar.
Founder, operator, merchant: the jobs behind the advice.
Most DTC consultants have run marketing at one brand, or an agency that served many. I've been the founder, the operator, and the merchant. I joined Shopify early to help build and scale the Partner Program, then co-founded WIN Brands Group, the acquirer behind Homesick, Qalo, and a portfolio of scaled consumer brands, and built Uptime from scratch and sold it to Tiny, a publicly traded acquirer. Alongside the DTC work I've advised Fortune 500 consumer-goods teams, including Nike, Coca-Cola, Hallmark, and P&G, on challenger-brand strategy.
What ties it together is pattern recognition. Consumer commerce has a relatively small set of real problems, and most of them repeat; I've seen them at $5M and at nine figures, inside Shopify and inside the brands built on top of it. I advise from having run the work myself. More in what DTC operators actually know, what to look for in a DTC consultant, and the full background. If you build software or apps in the ecosystem rather than a consumer brand, see Shopify growth consulting, or read about the Advisory tier.
Questions before we talk.
Start with the constraint, not the retainer.
The first call is a free 30 minutes on the constraint, and retainers don't come up. We cover where the P&L leaks, what you've already tried, and whether an outside operator changes the answer. If the answer isn't me, you'll hear that on the call. For a faster read, the DTC Growth Scorecard takes ninety seconds.