55%
gross margin held
through the scale
E-commerce & Growth Director
£200k
to £6.3m
in fourteen years.
I build the growth systems consumer brands actually run on: paid media, CRM, product and the automation underneath. Fourteen years of it, most of them at Bareback Footwear, where the margin held at 55% through 31.5× the revenue.
[ YOUR
PORTRAIT ]
PORTRAIT ]
Worcester, UK.
Open to Director roles, and a small number of consultancy projects.
Annual turnover · Bareback Footwear
31.5×
2016 · £0.2m
2021
2026 · £6.3m
£570k
annual media spend,
built from zero
10:1
LTV to CAC
£180 vs £18 nCPA
Meta AdsGoogle AdsKlaviyoShopify
TikTok ShopZendeskClaude
Proof
Every number here
carries its working.
Lifetime figures, not a good quarter. Fourteen years at one brand, through two platform migrations and a cost-of-living squeeze.
Google Ads
Feb 2017 – Aug 2026
16×
lifetime return on ad spend
- Clicks
- 712,000
- Campaign types run
- PMax · Search · Shopping · Demand Gen · YouTube
£6.3m
annual turnover,
up from £200k
55%
gross margin held
through the scale
376%
new-customer growth,
year on year
76.6k
CRM subscribers
grown from zero
38.6%
return to buy again,
1.7 orders each
−34%
product returns,
32% down to 21%
Bareback Footwear · 2016 – 2026
Meta figures pending
The growth factory
Five stages, and none
of them stand alone.
What a customer tells us at the end of this loop decides what we buy, photograph and advertise at the start of the next one.
Acquisition
£570k a year, built from nothing
- Meta at roughly 70% of budget, held to 10× lifetime and never below 6×.
- Google across PMax, Search, Shopping, Demand Gen and YouTube.
- TikTok Shop and GMV Max, plus AWIN affiliates.
- Bought at ~£18 nCPA against a blended 10× MER.
The shop
Built by hand, not by app store
- Self-built Shopify themes in HTML and CSS, no page-builder tax.
- Product finders and customer navigation written from scratch.
- Technical SEO and content automation running unattended.
- Every conversion test shipped by the person who ran the ads.
Retention
A quarter of revenue, owned outright
- 76,600 Klaviyo subscribers grown from zero.
- Thirteen live flows — welcome, browse, checkout, post-purchase, win-back, back-in-stock.
- A custom loyalty scheme with its own referral engine.
- 38.6% of customers come back, averaging 1.7 orders.
Product
Best-sellers grown into ranges
- Quebec, Hudson and Kentucky extended into ankle, mid, zip and long.
- Care products, insoles and socks sourced and priced in-house at ~80% margin.
- Bundles and checkout upsells lifting order value.
- Advertising a product beats advertising a collection.
Fit & returns
A third fewer boots came back
- 360° scans coded into the product page.
- A 1–5 fit level on the size row of every core boot.
- Charts, imagery and size-led advice before the add-to-cart.
- Returns fell from 32% to 21% in four months, and held.
What customers say about fit and use decides the next range, the next photograph and the next ad
55%
Gross margin, unchanged from £200k to £6.3m. Growth that costs margin is not growth.
10:1
Lifetime value to acquisition cost. £180 against £18, held while spend grew.
£126k
Recovered from imperfect stock through a direct-to-subscriber seconds programme.
Product
Advertise the boot,
not the category.
A collection ad competes with itself. A single proven boot does not. So rather than buy traffic for categories, we found the boots that already converted and grew each one into a range, every new height, closure and lining inheriting an audience that had already bought.
Quebec
The proven boot
Quebec Waterproof, Brown
4.86from 554 reviews
extended into
Ankle bootshigh instep
Zip-up ankleeasy entry
Zip-up mid-calfwide calf
Wool-lined zipwinter
Hudson
The proven boot
Hudson Mid Waterproof
£234one colourway, three heights
extended into
Hudson Ankle£194
Hudson Mid£234
Hudson Storm, long£269
One ladder, £75 of headroom+39%
Kentucky
The proven boot
Kentucky Jodhpur
£75the entry point into the brand
extended into
Kentucky Stormwaterproof, 8 colours
Kentucky Long Riding£279
Half-chapscompanion sale
£75 boot to £279 boot3.7×
3best-sellers turned into 34 core listings
Each extension launched into a warm audience rather than a cold one, so media went further per pound and the catalogue got deeper without the ad budget getting wider. Every new height, closure and lining also answered a fit complaint we had already read.
Returns & fit
A boot that fits
doesn't come back.
Returns are a photography and information problem long before they are a logistics one. Four changes to the product page, four months, and returns fell from 32% to 21%.
Returns rate, before and after
Before
32%
After
21%
−34%
32% of boots came back. Now 21%. Four months, and it has held since.
360° scans, coded into the page
Fifteen frames per boot, drag to spin. No more guessing what the back of the heel looks like.
A 1–5 fit level on the size row
Runs small to runs large, published per boot, not buried in a generic size guide.
Advice that changes as you pick a size
Calf and instep guidance surfaced at the moment of the decision, not after it.
Then we ask, after it arrives
A post-purchase email asks how the fit is, and the answers rewrite the fit levels.
360 VIEW
DRAG TO SPIN
DRAG TO SPIN
Hudson Mid Waterproof Boots
£234.00
Size
FIT
Runs slightly large
EU 42 — UK 8
Runs slightly large.
Your usual size should be right. If you’re between sizes, go down.
Men: stick to your typical size, or size up if you’re between sizes.
Calf
37.5cm
Measured at mid-calf height
Height
26cm
Sole to top of boot
Fit scale
Runs small
Slightly small
True to size
Slightly large
Runs large
Post-purchase, asking about fit
Sends at day six
“How do they feel?”
A quick fit check now your boots have arrived.
Six days after the order, once they have actually been worn. The flow splits first: a returning customer is asked about fit, a first-time buyer is offered an exchange. Both answers feed back into the fit level published on the product page.
Retention
Thirteen flows, and
one of them is a business.
A quarter of annual revenue arrives through a channel that costs nothing per send. Built from an empty list, and rebuilt from scratch in 2026 when the old flows stopped earning their keep.
Acquisition & recovery
Welcome SeriesAdded to list
Abandoned CheckoutMetric
Browse AbandonmentMetric
Back in StockMetric
After the order
Post-Purchase, splitting on repeat vs firstMetric
Fit check, day sixBranch
Win-backMetric
The loyalty engine
Voucher claimedReward redeemed
Friend's referral codeMetric
Referral creditMetric
Birthday creditDate based
Fit & service
International orderAdded to list
Wide-fit guidanceAdded to list
- Built, not bought
- A loyalty scheme written against Shopify and Klaviyo rather than licensed off the shelf, so the rules match how boots are actually sold and returned.
- Referral, not just points
- Four flows carry it: a code issued to a friend, credit released once they buy, credit on redemption, and a birthday credit. The referral arm waits five days, then splits on whether the friend has ordered in the last thirty.
- The returns window
- [ how credit vests against the returns window — your words needed ]
- Product exclusions
- [ which lines are excluded, and why — your words needed ]
- What it earns
- 25% of annual revenue arrives through email and SMS.
John Spilsbury Digital
The same work,
for other people's brands.
Eight consumer, local and online businesses since 2018, alongside the day job. Paid media, Shopify build, CRO and the commercial thinking that decides which of those to do first.
Leather goods, UK
Meta strategy, website improvements and growth planning for an established British bag brand.
Agency partner
Meta, CRO and Shopify recommendations feeding into larger client engagements.
Jewellery, two brands
Meta and Google Ads managed end to end: commercial goals translated into campaign structure, then into practical site changes.
Local & independent
Focused local campaigns for smaller operators, where the whole budget has to work the first time.
Client names are withheld pending permission. [ confirm which can be named ]
Contact
Fourteen years of this,
and still curious.
If you are hiring someone to own digital growth, or you have a brand that has stalled somewhere between £1m and £10m — I would like to hear about it.
- Emailj.e.t.spilsbury@gmail.com
- LinkedInjohn-spilsbury
- BasedWorcester, UK
- Open toDirector roles & select consultancy
- EducationBA (Hons) Human Geography, Edge Hill
- ElsewhereMountain ultrarunner · Lakeland 50 finisher