The short version:
- The brand arrived after two failed agency relationships. Sales had been flat for two-plus years, margin was leaking, pricing was broken to the point of dropping below cost, the Buy Box on hero SKUs sat in the low 60s, and one product had been published with artwork that mislabeled a top-9 allergen-free SKU.
- We rebuilt the unit economics first, recovered the Buy Box, restructured the ads out of a daily-budget cap, fixed an inventory model that ignored how the brand ships, and launched Subscribe & Save.
- Twelve months in, the brand posted a record month up about 60% year over year, conversion nearly doubled from 16% to 26%, and every single month under our management has been positive year over year.
- The brand's category on Amazon contracted more than 20% over the same period, so this was share taken in a shrinking market, not a rising tide.
Some Amazon accounts are stuck because the product does not sell. This one was the opposite problem. A leading better-for-you ingredient brand in the U.S. natural channel, founder-owned, top-9 allergen-free, with deep retail distribution and real demand behind it. The product was not the issue. The account had been run in a way that capped it for years, and by the time the founder reached out, she had already survived two agencies and just wanted one thing.
"We just want to be profitable."
Founder, on an early call
What we walked into
The founder had cycled through two Amazon agencies since her original partner sold the business. The most recent had run the account on autopilot: uploading inaccurate pricing, dropping prices below cost to chase resellers, and at one point publishing artwork that mislabeled a top-9 allergen-free SKU. Her description of the experience was blunt: a constant battle using incomplete data. Sales had been stuck in the same band since late 2022.
The audit surfaced five structural issues, and they compounded on each other.
Buy Box leakage. The hero SKU sat around 72%, a secondary SKU around 69%, and one variant as low as 43%. Resellers and unmanaged retail promotions were eating share of the brand's own sales.
Pricing architecture broken. A key variant was listed just above the Amazon fee threshold that changes the fee math, with no Subscribe & Save discount, so margin was leaking on the back end of every order.
Ad budgets capping. High-performing campaigns were hitting their daily caps and leaving qualified demand on the table, with low top-of-search share on Sponsored Brands.
Listings underbuilt. Videos were missing, infographics were absent, and A+ content was incomplete.
No margin floor. There was no agency-side visibility into landed cost or per-SKU profitability, so pre-ad gross margin was hovering around 20%, well below the 30% floor a brand needs to scale sustainably.
The root cause was an incentive problem. The previous agency had been paid on a commission-on-growth structure, so the entire relationship pointed at top line, and top line at the expense of profitability is exactly how a channel ends up busy and broke at the same time.
What we did, by lever
Margin architecture first. We rebuilt the landed-cost sheet with the brand's team, including the freight nuance their ops leads carried in their heads, so every decision finally had a real margin floor. Then we walked through pricing on every SKU against the Amazon fee thresholds and competitor positions.
Buy Box recovery. We mapped reseller activity, repriced strategically against retail promo windows, and took control of the listings. Average Buy Box climbed from the low 60s into the high 80s, and the secondary SKU alone went from a 20% Buy Box to 89%.
Ads restructured out of the bottleneck. We rebuilt the campaigns out of the daily-budget cap, expanded brand, competitor, and non-brand coverage, and added Sponsored Brand top-of-search reach. ACoS dropped from the low 30s into the mid-20s even as we increased ad spend by more than 50%.
Inventory built around reality. The brand ships quarterly, not monthly, a freight reality the previous agency ignored. We built quarterly inventory recommendations with buffer logic and mid-quarter replens, which took the account from chronic stranded inventory to being constrained only by its own capacity to grow.
Listing and creative rebuild. We refreshed the A+ content, storefront, and infographics, ran a main-image test on the allergen-free icon, and produced video ads.
Subscribe & Save activation. We layered coupons on the bulk SKUs to stand up an auto-ship program that did not exist before. Subscriber volume grew steadily, and Subscribe & Save now runs around 12% of monthly Amazon revenue.
Where the account landed
Twelve months in, the brand posted the highest-revenue month in its account history, and the more important part of that story is that it was not a spike.
Every month under our management has been positive year over year, and the curve is accelerating rather than flattening. The hero SKU grew 64% year over year in the record month, the secondary SKU grew 48%, and both ACoS and TACoS improved even as ad spend grew. The next milestone in front of the brand is its first-ever six-figure month, and the record month landed within striking distance of it.
The part that matters most: this was share, not a tailwind
It would be one thing to grow 60% in a category that was itself booming. The opposite was true here. Over the same period, the brand's primary category on Amazon contracted hard.
- Category search demand fell about 22%.
- Category purchases fell about 28%.
- The brand's own purchases held roughly flat, up about 6%.
- The brand's share of category purchases climbed from about 12% to nearly 18%.
On the single most important category query, the brand's share of purchases rose from about 48% to 55%. Branded search volume grew about 27% and branded purchases about 35%, which is evidence that real pull-through demand is building, not just paid-funnel performance. The brand grew by taking share in a shrinking market, which is a durable kind of growth.
Why it worked
The previous agencies were paid to grow the top line, so they grew the top line and let the bottom line leak. We were hired to make the channel profitable, so we started with the economics and fixed the sequence: rebuild what each unit earns, recover control of the brand's own sales through the Buy Box and the listings, then push spend in only where the math held. The founder's read on the change was simple.
"It's been refreshing to align with your team and a relief to know we don't have to babysit them."
Founder, email, January 2026
FAQ
Can a brand grow on Amazon while its category is shrinking? Yes, if the growth comes from taking share rather than riding demand. In this case the category contracted more than 20% while the brand grew about 60% year over year and roughly doubled its share of category purchases. That is the difference between owning your positioning and hoping the market carries you.
What usually goes wrong with a commission-on-growth agency fee? It points every decision at top line. Chasing revenue can mean dropping prices below cost, over-spending on ads, and ignoring margin leakage, so the growth chart climbs while the P&L does not. We price against a margin floor first, so growth and profit move together.
How fast did the account turn around? Every month under management was positive year over year from early on, and the record month landed about twelve months in. Buy Box recovery and the ad restructure produced early gains, and the unit-economics and inventory work made the growth durable.
Method
Figures are drawn from the brand's Amazon business and advertising reporting, Amazon Brand Analytics search-query data, and monthly review calls during the engagement. Year-over-year comparisons use the same calendar month one year apart. The client has been anonymized, and category figures reflect the brand's primary ingredient category on Amazon over the comparison period.
Ready to see what your Amazon channel really makes? Start with our free profit calculator, or talk to Luke. Either way you will leave knowing your true profit, which is more than your current reports can tell you.
Waypoint Growth Partners · growwithwaypoint.com · Denver, CO
