A Brooklyn streetwear brand stuck after iOS 14
A Brooklyn-based streetwear DTC brand on Shopify, founded in 2019 by 2 designers building limited-drop apparel for the New York hip-hop and skate community. The brand had reached $84,000 in monthly revenue in early 2023, but ROAS had collapsed from 4.2x to 1.6x after the iOS 14 attribution changes, and the founders had not figured out how to rebuild profitable acquisition in the post-tracking environment.
Why their Meta ads stopped working
The brand had 4 problems. First, Meta ads were still optimized around purchase events that no longer attributed cleanly, so the algorithm was optimizing against incomplete signal. Second, the email program was 2 broadcast campaigns per month with no segmentation and a 6% open rate. Third, the product detail pages on Shopify took 5.4 seconds to load on mobile, killing conversion on the channel where 78% of traffic landed. Fourth, the brand had no organic TikTok presence despite the founders' aesthetic being ideal for the platform.
How we rebuilt acquisition, email, and content
We rebuilt the Meta ads account around server-side tracking via Stape, with 28 creative variants tested per month across video, static, and carousel formats. Creative was shot in 2-day production sprints at the Brooklyn studio, mixing founder-led content with paid creator UGC. We set up Klaviyo with 11 lifecycle flows covering welcome, abandoned browse, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back at 30 days, win-back at 90 days, VIP customer paths, and back-in-stock notifications. We rebuilt the Shopify product detail pages with a custom theme that loaded the above-the-fold content in 0.8 seconds. We launched an organic TikTok program with 4 posts per week from the founder accounts, focusing on design process, drop teasers, and community content. We layered TikTok Shop integration during the second drop cycle, which captured a significant amount of impulse purchases the brand was previously missing.
Eight-month results across revenue, ROAS, and email
By month 8, monthly revenue reached $612,000, up from $84,000. Meta blended ROAS moved from 1.6x to 3.8x, with TikTok Ads layered on top at 4.4x. Email contribution to total revenue grew from 8% to 31%. Average order value increased from $47 to $79 because better product page presentation and bundled drops moved buyers up the price ladder. Repeat purchase rate climbed from 14% to 38%. Mobile page load time dropped from 5.4 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Organic TikTok grew from 1,200 followers to 184,000 followers, with one drop teaser video crossing 4.2 million views and selling out the corresponding collection in 4 hours.
What changed for the founders
The 2 founders had been running every function themselves. After the engagement, they hired a community manager, a fulfillment lead, and a junior designer, all funded by the new revenue. They opened a Williamsburg flagship store in month 9 of the engagement, which became their highest-margin sales channel. Elatre continues as the marketing partner running paid, email, and product page experimentation.