Issue 5 : Ecomm-specific P&Ls, fulfillment network optimization, and diagnosing Meta

In his series Bridges, Taylor Holiday, CEO of ecommerce growth agency Common Thread Collective, breaks down how to (you guessed it) build bridges between marketing and finance. 
 
Episode 1 proposes a restructured P&L for ecommerce companies that leverages ‘4 Quarter Accounting’ — breaking the P&L into acquisition cost, cost of delivery (product + fulfillment), operating expenses, and profit. Ideally you wind up with 25% in each of these buckets, which means 25% margin.

Go Deeper: Read and watch the 4 Quarter P&L episode here, and find the full series here.

The logistics and fulfillment portion of your business is likely full of opportunities for optimizing for costs, speed, and less headaches. Red Stag’s Chief Customer Officer, Tony Runyan, recently sat down with Jon Blair to talk about how to do just that. Jon knows a thing or two about optimizing—he was previously COO of Mark Cuban-backed Guardian Bikes and now runs Free2Grow CFO, a fractional CFO service for ecommerce businesses. 
 
One of my favorites opportunities: remember that when you design product packaging and put boxes in containers you need to consider 4 stakeholders who can influence your cost: 1) your factory, 2) your freight broker, 3) your 3PL/fulfillment center, 4) carriers. Forget one and you may save a bit of money in one step of the chain only to lose more than that in another.

Go Deeper: Watch the full episode on Youtube. 

My favorite part of this list was the (in order) bit. Worth spending some time in each bucket, starting at the top, if you’re struggling with Meta performance. 

Go Deeper: Follow Alex on X. 

Thanks for reading, and see you in 2 weeks.

-Paul