Ecommerce Playbook: Numbers, Struggles & Growth

What happens when a home flipper and an aspiring doctor decide to start selling lights during a pandemic? You get Lighthouse Co a curated lighting and home goods brand with 20,000+ SKUs, serving designers and homeowners across Canada and the US.

In this episode, Brian Sakansky sits down with Lighthouse Co co-founders Sarah and Jason at CTC HQ in Southern California. They break down the real story behind building multiple businesses from scratch, from custom cabinetry to curated ecommerce to building their own ERP software (ManuLink, all without formal training in any of it.

What you'll learn:

• How Lean methodology transformed a small cabinetry shop into a scalable operation

• Why Lighthouse Co gives every employee 30 minutes of paid time daily to improve one process

• The customer service principles that built their reputation (and why they fire vendors who don't match them)

• How they're navigating tariffs, economic uncertainty, and cross-border commerce in Canada and the US

• What it's really like running multiple businesses as a married couple

• Why their new ERP software was born out of necessity, not a business plan

Show Notes:

• See how Attentive helps connect people and the brands they love.: https://bit.ly/4ag8oEJ

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

Steve Rekuc, Director of Data at Common Thread Collective, joins Richard to break down the Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025 year-over-year data from the DTC Index.

The headline: Meta spend is up 25% year over year while ROAS only degraded 3%. Google ROAS actually increased 12% despite higher spend. The platforms are getting more elastic.

In this episode:

• Total revenue up 13.6% YoY with more coming from returning customers

• Meta spend up 25.28% with only 3% ROAS degradation 

• Google ROAS up 12% with 3.65% more spend

• Why AI-driven ad delivery is making both platforms better

• CPMs are up but click-through rates are improving

• The DTC Index data set: 200-300 stores, proprietary consumer confidence metrics

• Consumer confidence: future purchase sentiment and hope for the economy

• How the DTCCI (DTC Consumer Confidence Index) predicts spending elasticity

Show Notes:

• Go to https://www.chargeflow.io/ and use CF30 to recover chargebacks free for 30 days.

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

The number one pain point brands bring to us: "My current agency gives me execution, not strategy."

Luke and Richard, break down why that complaint, while valid, doesn't go far enough.

Most brands are stuck in one of two broken relationships:

• An agency that only executes (you tell them what to do, they do it)

• A consultant that only strategizes (they give you a plan and leave)

Neither owns the outcome. And that's the real problem.

In this episode, Luke and Richard walk through the hierarchy of what actually matters:

• Execution is the baseline (necessary but not sufficient)

• Strategy is the ascension (backed by data, methodology, and experience)

• Outcome is the North Star (predictable results you can hold someone accountable to)

Key insight: If the outcome isn't there, the strategy doesn't matter. If the strategy isn't there, the execution is just busy work. The Prophit Engine is built to own all three.

3% forecast accuracy across billions in managed revenue. That's outcome ownership.

Show Notes:

• Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign.

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

Taylor and Luke, walk through exactly how the Prophit Engine system enables one person to deliver the work and outcome of three.

This isn't about replacing people with AI. It's about what happens when you combine 12 years of methodology, a purpose-built data infrastructure, and an operator empowered by enterprise-grade tooling.

In this roundtable replay, Taylor demos:

• How data infrastructure creates the foundation for fast decisions

• The planning process: marketing calendar → financial forecast → daily targets

• Statlas dashboard: from contribution margin to campaign-level actions

• The Hierarchy of Metrics: diagnosing problems top to bottom

• Creative demand planning: how many ads, what products, which moments

• Outlier engine: why 3.5% of ads drive 66% of spend

• How AI context layers are making Prophit Engineers move 10x faster

Luke walks through:

• Creative analytics: spending power, outlier rates, activation economics

• How to turn creative production from gambling into math

Key stat: 3% forecast-to-target accuracy across $3B+ in managed revenue.

Show Notes:

• Go to https://www.chargeflow.io/ and use CF30 to recover chargebacks free for 30 days.

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

Tony Chopp, walks through the Hierarchy of Metrics — the framework our Prophit Engineers use to diagnose problems and take action for 170+ ecommerce brands.

In this episode, Tony and Richard break down a real brand example in Statlas, showing how you go from a contribution margin miss all the way down to a specific campaign adjustment in Google Ads.

The hierarchy:

• Business-level metrics (revenue, contribution margin, ad spend)

• Customer-level metrics (new vs. returning, paid vs. organic)

• Channel-level metrics (Google, Meta, email — iROAS by channel)

• Campaign-level actions (bids, budgets, new creative)

Key takeaways:

• Your ROAS target should be backed into through incrementality math and unit economics — not vibes

• "4 is not necessarily better than 3" — if 3 is the right number based on your COGS and incrementality, targeting 4 leaves volume on the table

• Over-efficiency is a symptom of underspend, not a badge of honor

• Good data in = good decisions out. The system is only as strong as your cost data, audience segmentation, and incrementality testing

Show Notes:

• See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

AI is changing how ecommerce brands produce creative. But most brands are using it wrong.

They're generating entire ads with AI and wondering why performance drops. Or they're ignoring it entirely and falling behind on volume.

In this episode, we break down how to actually use AI in your creative workflow without sacrificing the authenticity that drives results. The brands winning with AI aren't replacing their creative process. They're using AI to scale what already works.

What we cover:

• Why pure AI-generated creative sees CTR drops within 3 weeks

• Where AI actually adds value in the creative pipeline (backgrounds, cleanup, iteration)

• How to maintain authenticity while increasing creative volume

• The production ecosystem that lets you play probability instead of gambling

• Why 3-5% of your ads drive 70-80% of spend and what that means for AI

If you're running Meta ads and trying to figure out where AI fits into your creative strategy, this episode cuts through the hype.

Show Notes:

• Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign.

• Explore the Prophit Engine Lite: https://meetings.hubspot.com/richard-gaffin

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

Common Thread Collective is now an owner in Commerce Roundtable. In this episode, Taylor with Jimmy Kim, founder of Commerce Roundtable, to tell the full story of how this partnership came together and why in-person events matter more than ever.

Jimmy shares the origin story of Commerce Roundtable, from a 50-person CBD roundtable in a San Diego office in 2019 to a community-driven ecommerce event with 350+ curated attendees. Taylor talks about why CTC decided to go from attendee to owner, and what they're building together.

What we cover:

• How Commerce Roundtable started in 2019 and evolved through COVID

• Why most ecommerce events are broken (vendor-first, content-last)

• The difference between sponsor-driven events and community-driven events

• Why physical proximity and in-person relationships compound over time

• How CTC and Commerce Roundtable plan to work together

• What's coming: Austin (April 20-21), retention road show, San Diego (September)

• Why brands are willing to pay $400 to be in the room

• The future of ecommerce events and education

If you're building an ecommerce brand and you want to be in rooms with operators who actually get it, this is why we invested.

Commerce Roundtable: https://commerceroundtable.com

Show Notes:

• See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

Every ecommerce growth team spends the majority of their time answering the same five questions. The problem? Most brands answer them with disconnected tools, siloed teams, and spreadsheets that have nothing to do with the actual marketing levers they can pull.

In this episode, Luke breaks down the five questions that account for 80% of your marketing team's work - and how the Prophit Engine answers all five inside a single system:

1. What should my forecast be, and what does each channel need to deliver?

2. What's the optimal spend allocation across channels?

3. How much creative output do I actually need?

4. What's the right full-funnel Meta strategy and daily optimization workflow?

5. Where's the gap vs. forecast, and what specific action closes it today?

For each question, Luke walks through how brands typically answer it (disconnected finance forecasts, historical budget splits, gambling on creative volume, manual ad building, weekly business reviews) - and how a unified system replaces all of that with daily clarity.

Show Notes:

• See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

CTC has never had a service offering for brands below seven figures. That changes today.

Prophit Engine Lite is for any Ecommerce brand with established revenue below $1M annually. If you're past the startup phase, running ads, generating sales, and trying to figure out how to grow profitably, this is built for you.

In this episode, Richard walks through exactly what PE Lite includes:

Step 1: Connect every data source to Statlas.

• Marketing data, store data, COGS, shipping costs, fixed expenses, promo schedule. Everything in one place. One source of truth.

Step 2: Build a custom 12-month forecast model.

• What happens if business continues as usual? What needs to change to hit your goals? Where are the gaps? The model shows you.

Step 3: Growth guidance from a Prophit Engineer.

• Monthly sessions where your PE guides you through what to do next. What levers to pull. Where to allocate budget. What to stop doing.

Plus: Weekly cohort Q&A with Joy Sharma (Head of PE7 Accelerator). Learn alongside other founders in similar positions.

Pricing:

• $1,500 onboarding (data integration + model build)

• $500/month after (month-to-month, cancel anytime)

Show Notes:

• Axon is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to https://axon.ai/en/ctc to set up your first campaign.

• Explore the Prophit Engine Lite: https://meetings.hubspot.com/richard-gaffin

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have

Most brands are stuck in a cycle: source UGC creators, send product, hope the content is usable, repeat. The hit rate is low, the management is painful, and the content lacks consistency.

Adrianne breaks down a different model: a dedicated in-house creator, fully managed by CTC.

What this episode covers:

• Why one dedicated creator outperforms a rotating roster of 50 UGC creators

• How CTC matches creators to brands based on lifestyle, aesthetic, and audience fit

• The three boxes every brand needs checked: high quality, high volume, high diversity

• How the same creator face showing up across formats (ASMR, product walkthrough, day-in-the-life, green screen) builds trust

• Real examples: East Coast apparel brand matched with a creator who lives by the water, and a high-end furniture brand where gifting product is a $10K gamble

• How this feeds the PE creative demand model

•  The surround sound strategy: same person, wildly different formats

The dedicated creator model delivers the authenticity of UGC with the consistency and volume of an in-house team..

Show Notes:

• See how their guarantees work at https://redstag.com/

• Explore the Prophit Engine: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/prophit-engine

• The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have