Headland Marketing

Your Business Is Busy.
But When Did It Last
Actually Move Forward?

Fractional CMO for £3–15M e-commerce brands who are ready to stop confusing activity with progress.

30 Years Retail Experience Multiple Business Exits North East England
Book a Consultation How I Work
Working with e-commerce brands at £3M to £15M turnover
Sound Familiar?

The business is moving. It just isn't going anywhere.

New products launching. Ads running. Campaigns live. Team flat out. On paper, it looks like progress. But something doesn't sit right.

Revenue is decent, yet profitability is fragile. Marketing spend keeps climbing but the returns feel thinner. You've been here before. The same conversations, the same decisions, and you're not entirely sure the business is actually in a better place than it was twelve months ago.

That unease is important. Don't dismiss it.

"Instinct-driven businesses hit a ceiling. The very thing that built them becomes the thing that stops them from growing properly."

Most e-commerce founders at £3–15M have built something genuinely impressive through energy, instinct, and hard graft. But instinct has limits, and so does founder-led decision-making when the business has grown to this size. What got you here won't get you to the next stage.

You've Built Something That Works. But Now You're Stuck.

Three problems that appear in almost every engagement

Different businesses, same patterns. If any of these feel uncomfortably familiar, we should talk.

01

Inventory Chaos

£150k+ tied up in old stock. The warehouse is full of last season's mistakes whilst new products struggle to get any attention or budget. Your buying team is working hard, but not around any shared commercial framework.

02

Launch Failures

Every product drop feels like starting from scratch. Creative's late. Campaigns aren't ready. New products compete with existing ones for the same budget. There's no repeatable process, just reactive firefighting every single time.

03

Marketing Waste

£15k a month across five channels with no clear attribution. Nobody can tell you what's actually working. The agency says spend more. Your gut says something's wrong. Both might be right.

Brands we've worked with

Bamboo Bamboo
Clever Yoga
DMZ
Awesome Disco
Ink & Drop
Volcan Brands
Mud Daddy
Thrasio
The Gap

You've outgrown instinct, but you're not big enough for a full team

At £3–15M you need strategic CMO thinking. What you usually get is another ads agency, a junior marketer, or a consultant who's never owned a business.

Your Situation What You Need What You Usually Get
£3–15M turnover Strategic CMO thinking Another ads agency
Commercial complexity Someone who's done it before Junior marketer learning on you
Multi-channel coordination Profit-focused decisions "Spend more" advice
Product lifecycle management Retail fundamentals Digital theory
Where You Are  ——  Where You Need To Be

The Gap

You need a CMO who thinks like a founder. Someone who bridges the distance between where your business is and where it needs to be, with commercial rigour, not theory. That's the gap I fill.

The Real Diagnosis

Most founders are confusing activity with progress

The problem most founders won't say out loud

You've built this business on instinct, energy, and hard graft. That combination got you to £3M, £5M, maybe £10M. It's genuinely impressive. And because it worked, you keep doing it.

But instinct-driven businesses hit a ceiling. The very thing that built them — founder-led decisions, reactive speed, a bias for doing. It becomes the thing that stops them from growing properly. Or selling.

Whether your goal is a profitable exit, sustainable scale, or simply reducing your reliance on luck. The path forward requires commercial thinking, not more activity.

What it actually looks like

Activity
  • Launching another product
  • Running more ads
  • Being constantly busy
  • Adding more channels
Progress
  • Knowing which products make money
  • Understanding your true CAC
  • Building something that compounds
  • Coordinating channels around margin
Case Study

DMZ: From Chaos to Clarity

Fashion e-commerce brand, profitability turnaround in 5 months

The Problems

  • High return rate eating directly into margin. Returns had never been priced into the pricing structure
  • Marketing spend scattered across a wide range with no clear hierarchy or focus
  • Agencies driving the conversation, telling the brand what to do to help them sell more ads rather than looking at the underlying business case
  • New products launching every three weeks, cannibalising the last before it had time to establish itself
  • MOQ constraints strangling working capital and creating a perpetual cash flow problem
  • No projections in place. Decisions were being made without any forward visibility on revenue or margin

What We Did

  • Rebuilt the pricing structure to properly account for returns, working capital, and marketing costs
  • Restructured campaign architecture around the product lifecycle: core, launch, phase-out, rather than agency budget preferences
  • Created a repeatable 3-week launch framework with defined milestones and clear budget allocation
  • Built a financial planning model around working capital reality, not wishful thinking
  • Established core range graduation criteria to stop new products cannibalising existing ones
  • Introduced monthly projections so leadership could make decisions with actual forward visibility
5
Months to profitability turnaround
↓
Return rate reduced through correct pricing structure
✓
Forward visibility restored with monthly projections
Kris Headland, Fractional CMO
Because I've Been in Your Chair

Kris Headland, Fractional CMO

30
Years in Retail & E-Commerce
2+
Business Builds & Exits
£3–15M
Your Exact Stage

This isn't consulting theory. I've built a luxury watch e-commerce business and sold it. I built Ad Moat, a 15-person Amazon channel management business, and sold that in 2024. I've been through exit preparation, dealt with financial and strategic buyers, navigated aggregator conversations, and evaluated deals under pressure.

I know what a business looks like from the inside when it's busy but not improving. I know what it takes to change that, commercially, structurally, and behaviourally.

What Makes This Different

  • I think like an owner, not a consultant, because I've been one
  • I've done it across retail, e-commerce, Amazon, and physical retail, not just one channel
  • No junior team handed your account. You work with me, directly
  • I won't tell you what you want to hear. I'll tell you what the business needs
Kris Headland with Ellie, Clever Yoga founder
Case Study

Clever Yoga: Plateau to 7-Figure Exit

USA-based yoga e-commerce brand, sub-brand strategy & acquisition support

The Problems

  • Health and beauty product sales had plateaued. Ethical shampoo and conditioner bars were stagnating on Amazon despite a strong core brand
  • No distinct identity for the beauty range. The products sat awkwardly under the yoga brand, confusing the customer
  • Weak Amazon search visibility and no content strategy to support the category
  • No data framework to measure performance or iterate on what was and wasn't working

What We Did

  • Created "Wave", a sub-brand aligned with the ethical values of the beauty range, standing independently whilst leveraging Clever Yoga's existing audience and reputation
  • Built a content strategy centred on ethical beauty, optimised for Amazon and organic search to drive visibility and conversion
  • Established a data-led iteration process, tracking content performance and adjusting based on actual audience engagement
  • Supported Ellie through the full acquisition process, from positioning the business for sale through to achieving the exit she was looking for
7fig
Exit achieved. Sub-brand strategy central to the valuation
↑
Significant increase in basket size and sales volume within six months
✓
Clarity of brand purpose, the foundation for both growth and the eventual sale
Is This Right for You?

This is for you if any of this resonates

I work with a small number of businesses at any one time. Before we talk, here's an honest description of who gets the most from a Fractional CMO engagement at this level.

  • Your business turns over £3–15M and you sense it's more fragile than the revenue number suggests
  • You've had a bad quarter despite being constantly busy and you can't fully explain why
  • You're thinking about exit but suspect you're not as sellable as you'd like to believe
  • Ad spend is climbing but the returns aren't keeping pace
  • Your core products are losing momentum and marketing feels like a sticking plaster
  • You make most decisions on instinct and you're not sure that's enough any more
The Engagement

How We Work Together

Fractional CMO Partnership: direct, hands-on, commercially focused.

My Commitment to You

  • 2–3 days per month of direct, focused time
  • Monthly strategy sessions with your leadership team
  • Weekly check-ins with your marketing and buying teams
  • Campaign architecture and launch planning oversight
  • Performance review and course correction, monthly not quarterly

Typical Activities

  • Product lifecycle framework development
  • Launch process creation and calendar management
  • Campaign restructuring and channel coordination
  • Pricing strategy and margin improvement
  • Team coordination across buying, marketing, and finance
Next Steps

If any of that resonates, the next step is a conversation

No pitch deck. No hard sell. Just an honest 30-minute conversation about your business, what's working, and whether I can help.

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