Back to case studies Case Study — DTC Ecommerce

Building AeroBloc
from zero to £24k revenue
in 12 weeks.

A heated apparel brand built from absolute zero — no audience, no email list, no social following. Just a product, a Shopify store, Meta ads and a structured approach to scaling without burning margin.

£24k
Total Revenue
12wk
From Launch
3.02x
Peak ROAS
495
Orders Fulfilled
Brand
AeroBloc
Category
Heated Apparel — Jackets, Gilets & Insoles
Period
Oct 2025 — Jan 2026
Starting Point
Zero — no audience, no list, no history
Primary Channel
Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram)
The Challenge

Building a brand from nothing
in a competitive category.

AeroBloc launched into the heated apparel market with no existing brand recognition, no email list, no social audience and no prior sales history. The category is competitive — dominated by established brands with existing audiences and significant ad budgets.

The challenge was not just to acquire customers — it was to build a brand credible enough that customers would trust it with their money without any social proof, without reviews and without the track record that established brands rely on.

The product — heated jackets, heated gilets and heated insoles — is a considered purchase for most customers. It requires trust, clear product demonstration and compelling creative. That combination meant the ad strategy and the store needed to work together from day one.

"The goal was not to make noise. It was to build a system that could acquire customers profitably and scale without breaking."
AeroBloc Shopify Analytics Dashboard
What We Built

Store, ads and acquisition system —
built as one connected infrastructure.

Shopify Store — Shrine Theme
Built from scratch on the Shrine theme. Product pages engineered for conversion — benefit-led copy, strong hero imagery, free shipping incentive and trust signals. Bundles and upsells (free insoles with jacket purchase) implemented to increase AOV above the £43 baseline.
Meta Ads — Broad, 7-Day Retarget, 14-Day Retarget
Campaign structure built around three core audiences — broad cold traffic, 7-day retarget and 14-day retarget. Campaigns were duplicated when scaling rather than increasing budgets directly, preserving Meta's learning phase and avoiding performance drops that come with aggressive budget increases.
UGC Creative Strategy
UGC (user-generated content style) video was the clear winner across all campaigns. Multiple ad batches tested — static images underperformed significantly against UGC. The winning angle centred on product demonstration and warmth in cold weather scenarios.
Wholesale Deal
In addition to DTC sales, a B2B deal was struck to supply 39 jackets wholesale — generating approximately £1.6k in additional revenue and validating the product at a commercial level beyond direct to consumer.
AeroBloc Meta Ads Manager Campaign Overview
AeroBloc Meta Ads Manager ROAS Breakdown
The Numbers

Full performance breakdown —
Oct 2025 to Jan 2026.

Revenue & Store Performance

£24k
Total Revenue
£21.2k DTC + £1.6k wholesale deal
535
Total Orders
496 Shopify store orders + 39 wholesale orders (B2B deal — completed off-platform). Shopify analytics shows 495 fulfilled.
£43.74
Average Order Value
Lifted by bundles and upsells
2.81%
Actual Store Conversion Rate
496 real orders / 17,627 sessions. Shopify reports 2.43% using completed checkouts (429) — the gap is orders completed via Shop Pay and PayPal express routes not captured in Shopify checkout funnel data.
3.36%
Returning Customer Rate
Strong for a new brand with no email flows
£15.6k
Revenue from Facebook
Dominant acquisition channel throughout

Meta Ads Performance

£10,804
Total Ad Spend
Across 26 campaigns
1.19M
Total Impressions
Across the full period
2.63%
Blended CTR
Strong indicator of creative quality
£0.34
Avg CPC
Exceptionally efficient for the category
1,009
Add to Carts
Strong product page engagement
3.02x
Peak ROAS
14-day retarget campaign
Campaign Breakdown

How the campaign structure
performed across all three tiers.

Broad — Ad Batch 1 — UK — UGC (Top Campaign)
£4,495 spend · 616k impressions · 2.52% CTR · £0.29 CPC · 643 add to carts
1.81x
ROAS
Broad — 7-Day Retarget
£2,337 spend · 173k impressions · 2.29% CTR · £0.59 CPC · 303 add to carts
2.08x
ROAS
Broad — 14-Day Retarget with New UGC (Best ROAS)
£1,458 spend · 157k impressions · 3.86% CTR · £0.24 CPC · 291 add to carts
3.02x
ROAS
Broad — Scale 1 — UK — UGC
£582 spend · 126k impressions · 1.93% CTR · £0.24 CPC
1.36x
ROAS
Broad — Scale 2 — UK — UGC
£564 spend · 79k impressions · 2.32% CTR · £0.31 CPC
1.02x
ROAS
"The 14-day retarget with fresh UGC creative was the standout — 3.02x ROAS at £0.24 CPC. Warm audiences responding to new creative angles consistently outperformed cold traffic at scale."
What Worked

The key decisions that drove
the results.

UGC Over Everything
Static image ads consistently underperformed against UGC video. The winning creative approach was authentic, in-context product demonstration — showing the heated jacket being worn in real cold weather scenarios. CTR on UGC campaigns averaged 2.5-3.8% versus sub-1% on static. For a new brand with no social proof, UGC provided the trust signal that polished brand imagery could not.
Duplication Over Budget Increases
When scaling, winning campaigns were duplicated rather than having their budgets increased directly. This preserved Meta's learning phase — increasing a campaign budget by more than 20% resets the algorithm's optimisation. Duplication allowed scaling without performance degradation, maintaining efficiency across the account.
Retargeting Tiers Built Early
The 7-day and 14-day retarget campaigns were set up from day one rather than added after the fact. This meant that as the cold traffic campaigns built an audience, the retarget campaigns immediately began converting warm visitors. The 14-day retarget with fresh UGC became the highest ROAS campaign in the account at 3.02x.
Free Shipping and AOV Mechanics
Implementing free shipping and bundle offers — including free insoles with jacket purchases — improved both conversion rate and AOV. The store conversion rate of 2.43% is above the DTC ecommerce average of 1.5-2%, reflecting that the product page and offer structure was doing its job effectively.
Wholesale as Proof of Concept
The B2B wholesale deal — 39 jackets to a single buyer — added £1.6k to total revenue and validated commercial demand beyond the direct to consumer channel. For a 12-week-old brand, a wholesale agreement demonstrates product credibility at a commercial level.
The Operator's View

What we would do differently
at scale.

AeroBloc achieved strong results for a zero-history brand — £24k revenue, 495 orders and a 2.43% conversion rate in 12 weeks. But with the data from this period, there are clear levers that were not fully pulled.

Scale harder, earlier. The retarget campaigns — particularly the 14-day with fresh UGC — were consistently the highest performers. With hindsight, budget should have been redistributed toward these campaigns more aggressively once their performance was proven.

Email flows from day one. With 3.36% of customers returning without any email marketing in place, a structured welcome, abandoned cart and post-purchase flow would have materially increased repeat purchase rate and LTV. The returning customer rate was organic — with retention infrastructure it would have been significantly higher.

Faster creative iteration. The winning UGC formats were identified early but new angles could have been tested faster to find additional winning creatives before existing ones fatigued.

"The numbers are strong. But this is what £24k in 12 weeks looks like without email flows, without a loyalty mechanic and without pushing scale aggressively once we knew what was working. The ceiling was higher."
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