Article

Unit Economics for DTC Brands: The Complete Guide

Top Growth Marketing · topgrowthmarketing.com Free Intermediate

A thorough operator guide that walks contribution margin, CAC, LTV and payback with benchmarks across DTC verticals - handy for setting expectations by category. Good breadth for founders who want the full glossary plus numbers in one place.

  • Benchmarks vary sharply by vertical (beauty vs apparel vs F&B vs supplements).
  • Payback period under ~90 days is a common healthy target.
  • Connects each metric to a concrete decision, not just a definition.
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The question it answers

  1. What's a good LTV:CAC ratio, and when is my D2C brand actually profitable?

Read with it

  1. Sauce.vc writes first cheques into pre-revenue Indian consumer brands - this traces how their thesis evolved as they followed... inc42.com Article From Pre-Revenue to Growth: How Sauce.vc's Thesis Kept Up With India's D2C Boom Inc42
  2. The canonical investor's-eye view of why LTV:CAC drives valuation, and why 3:1 became the rule of thumb. Read it to understand... a16z.com Article Why Do Investors Care So Much About LTV:CAC? Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
  3. The classic investor vocabulary for CAC, LTV, gross margin and the metrics that get misused in decks. Even though it's... a16z.com Article 16 Startup Metrics Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
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