Introduction
Private‐equity buyers do not acquire consumer brands for yesterday’s numbers. They pay for tomorrow’s cash flows and today’s operational certainty. In eCommerce that certainty evaporates quickly. Algorithms change, shipping rates spike, and a single discount error wipes out margin. The standard forty-page strategy deck is not enough. What investors need is a disciplined 100-day plan that locks in quick wins, installs the data infrastructure for further gains, and sets a culture of measurable execution.
eComplete has delivered more than fifty post-acquisition transformations for mid-market digital brands. Patterns repeat. Retention lifts before acquisition efficiency, inventory accuracy drives working capital, and data visibility underpins every decision. By day one we have dashboards, by day thirty a new email and SMS cadence, by day sixty paid media at a lower blended CAC, and by day one hundred the supply chain produces margin instead of burning it.
This playbook breaks that process into practical steps across CRM, paid media, supply chain, and technology. Whether you are an operating partner tasked with year-one value creation, or a founder rolling equity who wants to keep momentum, the next pages give you a checklist for each week. All recommendations are drawn from direct operating experience and benchmarked through eComplete’s proprietary data platform, which ingests more than six hundred live metrics from DTC brands every day.
Value Creation Philosophy and Day Zero Setup
A 100-day plan fails when it begins at day one. It must start at day zero, during confirmatory diligence. Before the deal closes we assemble a “single source of truth” in a secure data room:
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Daily sales and traffic feeds from Shopify, Amazon, or Magento
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Ad platform APIs covering Meta, Google, TikTok, and affiliates
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Warehouse management exports for order-level cost and carrier data
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Finance system trial balance to connect accruals with channel performance
Once streams flow we build a live contribution-margin model. This reconciles revenue, discount, shipping revenue, product cost, fulfilment, transaction fees, and duty. The output is margin by country, channel, and SKU. Investors now see where profit leaks before the ink dries.
Key day-zero questions
|
Theme |
Question |
Target answer |
|
Data |
Can we refresh KPIs every 24 hours without manual work? |
Yes, via automated ETL |
|
Organisation |
Do we have an interim COO, CFO, and head of growth on standby? |
Contracts drafted |
|
Accountability |
Will management bonuses link to margin, inventory turns, and LTV:CAC? |
KPIs agreed in SPA |
With the ground prepared, we sequence the first hundred days by order of impact. The next sections outline the workstreams in detail.
Days 1-30: CRM First, Because Retention Is Cheap Revenue
Step 1: Database Health Check
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De-duplicate contacts and map customer lifecycle stage.
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Calculate 30, 90, and 360-day repeat purchase rates.
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Tag discount code users so first-order margin can be tracked separately.
Step 2: Flow Fixes
Most brands have dormant automated flows. We rebuild three that drive the fastest payback.
|
Flow |
Metric |
Baseline |
Target |
|
Welcome series |
Conversion rate |
5% |
12% |
|
Browse abandonment |
Click-through |
6% |
10% |
|
Post-purchase |
30-day repurchase |
8% |
15% |
We use dynamic product recommendations and segment by contribution margin rather than revenue. Low-margin SKUs receive smaller incentive codes.
Step 3: Broadcast Calendar
A simple rhythm beats sporadic “blasts.”
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Tuesdays: content led, no discount, community building
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Thursdays: margin positive bundles
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Sundays: loyalty exclusive offer
Result benchmarks
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Email revenue share rises from 18 to 28 per cent of total DTC sales.
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Deliverability improves domain reputation; paid media CPMs drop two to six per cent due to higher quality scores.
Practical tip
Insert a dynamic margin column in your email service provider. If an item’s margin ratio falls below the threshold, the flow substitutes a higher-margin SKU automatically.
Days 31-60: Paid Media Profitability without Starving Growth
The goal is not to slash spend. It is to align CAC to lifetime value after retention gains.
Audit and Reset
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Pause under-performing ad sets for 48 hours.
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Refresh creative with five new hooks per product line.
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Exclude discount code users who have not repurchased.
We export a twelve-month cohort LTV, net of refunds. Paid media budgets are capped at 35 per cent of that value. Campaign managers see the guardrail in a shared dashboard that updates daily.
Channel allocation framework
|
Channel |
Before % |
After % |
Rationale |
|
Meta |
55 |
45 |
CPM inflation mitigated by CRM recovery |
|
Google Shopping |
20 |
25 |
High intent drives first-order profit |
|
TikTok |
10 |
15 |
Cheaper reach, creative testing pool |
|
Affiliate |
15 |
15 |
Fixed CPA, low risk |
Creative testing uses a quadratic funding model: start eight variations at £50 daily. Any ad that hits a three-times ROAS after £300 lifetime spend graduates to core.
Expected outcomes by day 60
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Blended CAC reduced 12-18 per cent.
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Creative testing cycle time down from fourteen to five days.
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Contribution margin per order up 1.2 points from acquisition efficiency alone.
Days 1-90: Supply Chain and Fulfilment as Margin Multipliers
Week 1 Diagnostic
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Map every cost from factory gate to customer door.
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Benchmark pick-pack rates, packaging, and label pricing against eComplete’s 3PL index across Europe and North America.
Week 2-6 Quick Wins
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Renegotiate carrier surcharges. Our average saving is £0.24 per parcel.
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Move slow-moving SKUs to economy service.
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Replace void fill with right-size packaging, saving volumetric weight.
Week 7-12 Structural Change
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Implement a landed cost engine for cross-border orders so duties are prepaid.
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Introduce ABC stock classification and reorder points, cutting overstock by fifteen per cent.
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Draft a dual-node fulfilment blueprint for US or EU expansion.
Margin impact table
|
Lever |
Typical basis-point gain |
Time to realise |
|
Carrier renegotiation |
60-90 |
30 days |
|
Packaging optimisation |
40-70 |
45 days |
|
Duty prepayment |
50-120 |
90 days |
Combined, these moves can raise gross margin by two to three points on international orders and free cash tied in inventory.
Days 1-100: Tech and Data Infrastructure Everyone Trusts
Data Lake and Dashboard
We deploy our data platform for extraction, storage & visualisation to power core dashboards:
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C-suite: revenue, margin, CAC, cash balance.
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Trading: SKU velocity, stock cover, gross margin return on inventory.
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Marketing: LTV:CAC, creative ROAS, cohort retention.
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Supply chain: fulfilment cost per order, pick error rate, delivery on time.
Dashboards refresh hourly, daily & weekly as required.
Workflow Automation
Using our platform we
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Slack alerts when margin per order dips below threshold.
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Purchase-order creation when stock days on hand fall under thirty.
Security and Compliance
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Two-factor authentication on all SaaS tools.
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Daily off-site backup.
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GDPR review of automated emails for marketing consent.
Payoff by day 100
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Reporting time drops from eight hours per week to zero.
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Leadership makes decisions on the same numbers, reducing meeting time by thirty per cent.
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Investors receive a weekly PDF pulse without manual work.
100-Day Timeline at a Glance
|
Day |
Workstream |
Milestone |
KPI Target |
|
0 |
Data ingestion |
Contribution margin model live |
Accuracy ±1% |
|
7 |
CRM |
Welcome flow relaunched |
Conversion 8% |
|
14 |
Supply chain |
Carrier renegotiation complete |
Save £0.24 per parcel |
|
30 |
CRM |
Email share of revenue 25% |
Baseline +7 points |
|
45 |
Paid media |
New creative testing cadence |
10 variations live |
|
60 |
Paid media |
Blended CAC -15% |
Target realised |
|
75 |
Tech |
Dashboards live for all teams |
Refresh daily |
|
90 |
Supply chain |
Duty prepaid for top 5 countries |
Margin +1 point |
|
100 |
Board pack |
Full 100-day KPIs delivered |
EBITDA uplift trajectory set |
Conclusion
Post-acquisition growth in eCommerce hinges on speed and sequencing. Fix retention before attacking CAC, secure margin before chasing top-line, and build data pipes so every decision is evidence based. A disciplined 100-day plan converts theory into measurable profit and sets the tone for the next thousand days.
eComplete’s operator teams have executed this playbook for beauty, wellness, and home brands across forty markets. Our proprietary data platform supplies real-time benchmarks, and our interim leaders own P&Ls until permanent hires are ready. Investors get confidence, founders see momentum, and the business scales on a foundation of truth.
If your latest acquisition needs rapid traction, we would love to share our dashboards and case studies. Start the conversation here: https://www.ecomplete.com/contact
