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In today’s newsletter,
Know your real margins with these six Excel models
What makes Snag's size quiz different
Why some DTC brands have already lost Black Friday
Build a digital marketing strategy that drives better results.
AI Launch Codes: Stop Prompting AI. Give It a Finish Line.
This issue takes 2 minutes to read.
Check out our DTC tool stack here
Let’s dive into it👇
Resources
Know your real margins with these six Excel models
Your P&L shows what happened, but it can’t tell you if you’re actually making money. These six Excel models go a layer deeper: 13-week cash by bank balance, component-level COGS, channel margin per unit, inventory roll-forwards, monthly payback, and itemized trade spend.
Built by ex-CPG FP&A leads. Unlocked and documented in Excel and Google Sheets, so you can check every formula and defend it to your board. No Drivepoint account required. Plug in your SKUs, thirteen months, your own numbers, and know your margins, fees, and break-even cold.
Brand Breakdown
What makes Snag's size quiz different
We're doing a 100 days of stealing strategies from brands that are already winning.
For day 12, we have Snag.
Most size quizzes give you one answer. Height, weight, done, you're a medium.
Snag doesn't.
Their quiz asks your shape, your usual sizes, your height, and gives you the option to add real measurements.
Then it hands you six sizes instead of 1: tights, fishnets, tops, bottoms, dresses, denim, each sized separately, because a body that's a US 4 on top isn't automatically an 18 on the bottom.
And right under the result: "only a 2% return rate, true to size." The proof shows up exactly when the shopper is deciding whether to trust the number they just got.
So here's what you should do today: stop giving customers one size across your whole catalog. If your product categories fit differently, size them differently.
And back up the result with a number that proves it works.
Fulfillment Friday
Why some DTC brands have already lost Black Friday
PEAK SEASON · RESILIENCE PART 1
For a DTC brand, "peak" is the stretch from the first cheap October ad impressions to the last January return. It's when a big share of the year's revenue lands in a few weeks, and when the back end (freight, fulfilment, carriers, customs) is under the most strain it will see all year.
The dates that shape it:
From October — carrier peak surcharges start layering onto every parcel.
Fri 27 Nov — Black Friday. Mon 30 Nov — Cyber Monday. The volume spike.
Mid-to-late December — the "by Christmas" delivery cutoffs you're judged against.
January — "Returnuary," the returns wave that decides your real margin.
Some brands have already lost this peak. They'll find out in December.
The setup you take into Black Friday is the one you're stuck with. Every operator says the same thing about a partner that isn't working: peak is the worst possible time to switch. Ask Haven, a Las Vegas 3PL that stopped shipping through the 2025 post-Thanksgiving window and then went dark. One designer flew thirty-five hours from Thailand to dig his own stock out of the warehouse, according to Business of Home.
So the decisions that decide your Q4 happen now, in August. Three things to check while you still can:
Capacity headroom. Can your setup absorb volume above forecast, or are you already at the ceiling?
More than one carrier. One lane means one cap. If it fills, you're sitting on orders you can sell but can't ship.
One owner at 2am. When something breaks on Cyber Monday, is it one team on the fix, or five vendors pointing at each other?
That last one is what a 4PL is for. One warehouse going quiet becomes a routing decision, not a disaster.
Nick Bartlett | Co-Founder @ Wayfindr — Your Growth Partner for eCommerce Logistics
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Stop Prompting AI. Give It a Finish Line.
The one feature that has completely changed the way I use AI is Goals.
There are two ways to use AI.
The first is how most of us have used it until now.
You prompt it one step at a time:
Do this research → Analyze these results → Use that analysis to create something
You decide the workflow, move the task forward and repeatedly tell AI what to do next.
The second option is the /goal command in Chatgpt or Claude Cowork .
What is a Goal?
A Goal is an objective that stays active until the work is complete.
You tell ChatGpt or Claude the outcome you want. It breaks the job into steps, works through them automatically and tracks its progress along the way.
Instead of managing every step, you define the finish line.
Here’s a simple example
I asked Codex to find me a flight from Dubai to New York.
I provided my dates, arrival preference and stopover rules. I also told it to stop before entering my personal details.
Chatgpt automatically created this plan:
Search live fares
Filter for morning arrivals and acceptable stops
Compare prices, baggage and booking conditions
Open the best booking path and hand it back to me
I didn’t give it those individual instructions.
I gave it the destination. It worked out the route.
It handed me the reigns exactly where i asked it to, at the passenger details.
Flights are only an illustration. The real value is using Goals for business workflows.
Imagine you need new ads
The process might involve:
Pulling performance data from Meta Ads
Identifying patterns across your winners and losers
Pulling competitor ads from Foreplay through its API
Finding angles your competitors are using
Writing new ads based on the evidence
You could prompt AI through each step individually.
Or you could give it one Goal:
Assuming the required tools are connected, ChatGpt can build the workflow and work through each step automatically.
It only stops when the Goal is complete, it reaches a boundary you set or it genuinely needs your input.
That’s the difference:
A prompt tells AI what to do next.
A Goal tells AI what must be accomplished.
Now, this might sound like a silver bullet.
It isn’t.
A Goal is only as good as the instructions behind it.
Give AI a vague outcome, weak boundaries or no clear definition of “done,” and it can work efficiently toward the wrong result.
The real skill isn’t simply using /goal.
It’s knowing how to construct a Goal that produces exactly what you want.
That’s the part most people will get wrong.
How to construct a Goal that delivers the right output
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