Ecommerce: The Hammersley Brothers Ecommerce Podcast

Not all ecommerce businesses are built the same, and some are dramatically easier to scale than others.

In this episode, Mark and Ian Hammersley break down the five different types of ecommerce businesses and rank them from easiest to hardest to scale.

The five types are:

Each model behaves completely differently.

A strategy that works brilliantly for a supplement brand could be disastrous for a furniture company. A business selling spare parts needs a completely different advertising, stock, and customer-acquisition strategy than a fashion retailer.

Mark and Ian explain why understanding your ecommerce type changes the numbers you should look at, the ROAS you can afford, how aggressively you can acquire customers, how much stock you need, and, ultimately, how quickly the business can grow.

They also discuss why some of the least exciting ecommerce businesses can quietly create enormous wealth.

Need-driven businesses selling things like replacement parts, shelving and specialist products can sometimes dominate markets because competition is lower and the customer already knows exactly what problem they need solving.

Meanwhile, Compounders such as supplements, skincare, and consumable products can scale incredibly quickly because repeat purchasing creates a high lifetime customer value. But they can also be brutally competitive and disappear almost as quickly as they grow.

The episode covers:

If you're trying to scale an ecommerce brand, understanding which type of business you actually own could completely change how you approach growth.

Subscribe for more practical ecommerce strategy, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Shopify, and business growth discussions from the Hammersley Brothers.

#Ecommerce #EcommerceBusiness #EcommerceGrowth

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

Your Google and Meta ROAS looks great. Ad spend is increasing. The platforms are telling you everything is working.

So why isn’t the business actually growing?

In this episode, Mark and Ian Hammersley unpack one of the most common problems they see in ecommerce businesses: brands dramatically increasing their advertising spend while recruiting the same number, or even fewer, new customers.

They explain why a high ROAS inside Google or Meta can give you a completely misleading picture of performance, particularly when existing customers, brand searches and attribution are inflating the numbers.

The conversation covers how to step back from the advertising dashboards and answer the question that actually matters:

When we put more money into advertising, did we get more money and more new customers out?

Mark and Ian also break down the ecommerce advertising S curve, where increasing spend initially drives growth before eventually reaching a point where putting more money into the account stops producing meaningful additional revenue.

And when you hit that limit, the answer is not always better ads.

Sometimes you need to improve the business itself.

They discuss:

• Why a high ROAS does not automatically mean your ads are working  

If you run an ecommerce business and keep increasing your advertising budget without seeing the growth you expected, this episode could help explain exactly what is going wrong.

Subscribe for more ecommerce strategy, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Shopify and business growth discussions from the Hammersley Brothers.

#Ecommerce #ROAS #GoogleAds

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

Most ecommerce businesses think about Black Friday as a day or a weekend. We think about it as an entire trading period from Halloween through to January.

In this episode, Ian Hammersley breaks down how we actually approach the biggest ecommerce trading period of the year, including when to start, how long to run your offers, how aggressively to email, what to do with Google and Meta, and how to make the most of increased demand without destroying your margins or running out of stock.

We cover the full Q4 rhythm, starting with Halloween and moving through Better Than Black Friday, Black Friday Week, Cyber Week, Christmas, Boxing Day and the January sales.

Ian also explains why ecommerce brands often start too late, why your email database becomes one of your most valuable assets during peak, how to decide how hard you can push based on stock and ROAS, and why merchandising can have a huge impact on what actually sells.

Topics include:

Black Friday timing and strategy

If you run an ecommerce business, this episode gives you a practical framework for approaching the most important trading period of the year.

Subscribe for more ecommerce strategy, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Shopify, email marketing and business growth discussions from the Hammersley Brothers.

#Ecommerce #BlackFriday #Shopify

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

Your bestsellers can look available while the sizes your customers want are sold out. We made that mistake in our own Shopify bedding business, with replacement products available further down the collection pages.

Want help identifying what is holding back growth in your ecommerce business? Apply to work with the Hammersley Brothers:

https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=shopify_stock_mistake&utm_content=description

In this episode, Mark and Ian explain what happened and discuss the stock, merchandising and advertising decisions to review before Black Friday and Christmas trading.

We cover why selling out is not always a success, when spending more on advertising makes little sense, and how to investigate products you could have sold more of last year.

We also discuss avoiding panic hires, helping your ecommerce team understand what matters, and using AI to analyse business data without handing over the decisions.

Subscribe for practical ecommerce conversations about sales, margins and profitable growth.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

Why do successful ecommerce brands suddenly stop growing?

After reviewing 100 ecommerce businesses and working with thousands of brands over the years, we identified the seven most common bottlenecks that prevent ecommerce companies from reaching the next level.

Watch the full episode to discover where your ecommerce business may be getting stuck and what you should focus on next.

Subscribe for practical ecommerce growth strategies based on real businesses, real numbers and decades of experience.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

In previous episodes, we explored the strategies that help an ecommerce business navigate each stage of growth.

Now, we use our premium bedding brand as a real-world case study, following its journey from an unproven store with underperforming ads to a multimillion-revenue business entering the scaling phase.

Inside the episode:

• How to validate whether strangers will buy from an unknown brand

You do not need more random tactics.

You need to understand your ecommerce type, your current revenue stage and the specific constraint preventing you from reaching the next level.

Watch the full episode to learn how to stop operating emotionally, build a reliable growth model and make better decisions with advertising, stock, margins and cash flow.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

3. Follow the Hammersley Brothers on Instagram and connect with e-commerce owners who are scaling too - 

What should an ecommerce founder actually focus on once the business reaches 5 million in annual revenue?

In the fifth episode of our ecommerce growth series, we explain how the founder’s role, financial priorities and growth strategy must change as the company moves from 5 million to 20 million.

At this stage, tiny improvements can produce huge results. Better supplier terms, stronger margins, improved conversion rates and smarter cash flow decisions can add millions in revenue and profit.

But this is also where businesses become bloated, founders hire the wrong senior people and teams start chasing numbers that do not benefit the overall company.

In this episode:

 • How to use your customer list, reviews and brand trust as a competitive moat

This stage is not about chasing every new tactic. It is about doing the right things exceptionally well, protecting the company’s profit, and using your scale to pull further ahead of competitors.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

This week on the Hammersley Brothers Ecommerce Podcast, we continue our five-part series on the stages of ecommerce growth.

In part four, we explain what really changes when an ecommerce business grows from 1 million to 5 million per year.

This can be one of the most exciting stages of growth, but it is also one of the most dangerous. Hiring larger teams, working with more agencies, expanding into new countries, adding products, and increasing fixed costs may cause revenue to rise quickly while profit quietly disappears.

At this stage, growth cannot be left to chance. You need to understand exactly how your marketing spend, margins, stock, fixed costs, and profit work together.

Otherwise, you may build a much larger business that makes less money.

Subscribe for the final episode in the series, where we cover the journey from 5 million to 20 million.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

Welcome back to the Hammersley Brothers eCommerce Podcast and our series on the different stages of ecommerce growth.

This episode is for ecommerce founders who want to move beyond the early growth stages and build a business that is clearer, more profitable, and easier to scale.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

This week on the Hammersley Brothers eCommerce Podcast, we continue our series on the stages of ecommerce growth.

After covering the 0 to 100K stage last week, this episode focuses on the next major step: growing from 100K to 500K per year.

This is where many ecommerce businesses start to feel like they have something real. But it is also the stage where founders often make the mistakes that stop them from scaling.

In this episode, we break down:

 • Why 100K to 500K is the danger zone for ecommerce brands

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book