As we move into the busy season, I’ve been thinking about how I’ll be spending our time at Draft, and what really matters to me in my life.
In past years, I would work really hard from August until around the second week of December, when economy shipping deadlines would hit. Then I would drop off the face of the earth from then until March.
This year will be a little different, for a few reasons:
- The only important thing I launched this year, text, is both fun for me to make and generating a small profit. People seem to love reading it, to the point where it has become many others’ “drop everything and read this” newsletter, even though it is not a newsletter, only text, an endless & beautiful avalanche of text. I like focusing on text. I think text is worth my heartbeats.
- I have enough money to make it through the rest of the year. If nobody pays me to do anything between now and December 31, Draft will lose a small amount of money, but ultimately we’ll be fine.
- Society is fractally collapsing.
- I’m tired.
- So are you.
As a result, we’ll be taking precisely enough work that we can break even on our expenses, and once we’re paid we’ll be saying “no” to everything else. At that point, there will be no more teardowns, no Revise Express reports, and no new consulting engagements until the new year.
This will happen much sooner than you think. We are talking to a bunch of prospective clients this week. If one of them signs at our biggest plan, that’s it.
So if you want to work with Draft to optimize your store before Black Friday, you should probably reach out now. Like, today-today. And you should put us in front of everyone responsible for clearing the deal on your end. Our work is tightly coupled with revenue generation. Act accordingly.
If you want to buy a teardown, here’s the link.
If you want our books, here you go.
And if you want to work together to increase your average revenue per user by 10% or more this holiday season, hit reply to this email and tell us about your store.
That’s it. Thanks, as always, for reading, and for your ongoing support of our tiny business. May 2023 be gentler to us all.
This week, for paid members
- Our weekly paid lesson divvies up a typical DTC brand’s marketing budget in the wake of iOS changes, societal collapse, and the necessity to diversify one’s acquisition channels. Brand operators miiiiight want to pay attention.
- Our fortnightly teardown is for carry accessory brand Makr. They made my wallet! Do they make a good store? Time to find out.
- And our design of the week analyzes an interesting lookbook for a major Canadian apparel brand. What does it do well, and where can it improve?
Want in? Join us now – now named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.
Links & analysis
- Do away with what designers “like” or “don’t like”, this person says. Correct!
- How to make accessibility fun. Since my own calls for accessibility have been relatively joyless in the past, this has been lovely to see. I don’t think people view alt text as part of their content strategy, much less their voice & tone guide, and I think that’s kind of sad. You can do a lot with accessibility to make it more fun & engaging!
- Baymard on apparel guidelines, including sizing, collection page organization, and color variations.
- Shopify lays off 10% of its workforce, mostly in non-building roles. Sending love to all those affected during such a rough time.
This week’s paid lesson: What should your marketing budget look like now?
This week’s lesson is for paid members. Sign into our community to read it, or join us today to get access.