VAULT Ecommerce

Owner: Merchandising Lead Tech lead: contract Shopify agency Y1, in-house head of digital Y2 Reports to: Taj (aesthetic and content), CSO (P&L, systems, financing) Domain: shop.thevault.club (subdomain of primary), redirect vault-apparel.com to it

1. Role of DTC

The physical club serves 800 members. DTC serves the other 79,200 people who follow the brand and cannot walk into Charlotte.

Y1 DTC target: 320,000 revenue, 40 percent of blended apparel P&L. Y2 target: 1.1M, 55 percent of blended. Y3 target: 2.4M, 65 percent of blended.

The physical club is the marketing budget for DTC. Every class taken, every competition streamed, every Taj campaign shot is DTC top-of-funnel that costs zero incremental acquisition dollars.

2. Tech Stack

Platform: Shopify Plus. Not Shopify basic, not Salesforce, not custom.

Reasoning: Shopify Plus at 2,300 per month handles the volume, integrates with in-club POS, supports the membership discount logic, and its ecosystem of apps eliminates 80 percent of custom dev. Custom stacks at this scale are ego, not strategy.

Core stack:

• Shopify Plus (platform)
• Shopify POS Pro (in-club register, same inventory pool)
• Klaviyo (email and SMS, tied to member CRM via Segment)
• Segment (customer data plane, unifies club CRM, POS, DTC, and app if built)
• Gorgias (support, tied to Shopify order data)
• Loop Returns (returns portal, drives exchange over refund)
• Yotpo (reviews and UGC, tied to loyalty)
• Nosto (personalization and product recommendations, replaces stock Shopify recs)
• Rebuy (upsell and cross-sell)
• Recharge (subscription for consumables: grip aids, chalk, member replen)
• ShipStation (fulfillment integration to 3PL)
• Northbeam (attribution, replaces reliance on Meta and Google’s own reporting)
• Cin7 or Shopify Flow for inventory logic across channels

Total monthly SaaS stack Y1: roughly 5,800.

Membership integration: club membership CRM (Mindbody or Mariana Tek, decision in operations doc) syncs to Shopify via Segment. Member tier drives price on the storefront. Non-member sees 168 dollars. Studio member sees 143. Black Card sees 126. This has to be live from Day 1 or the retention thesis breaks.

3. Storefront Design

Reference points: Aime Leon Dore, The Row, Loewe, Kith at its best, not Alo Yoga’s storefront (too busy).

Principles: - One product per row above the fold on drop pages, no grid density - Video first. Every product has a 12-second silent loop of the piece in motion, shot in-club - Taj is on the homepage always, but not always featured. She hosts, she does not model every piece. - No pop-ups. Ever. Email capture lives in the footer and on a dedicated newsletter page. - No urgency banners. No “only 3 left.” No countdown timers on drops. The brand does not beg.

Editorial pages: every drop has a dedicated editorial page with a short essay from Taj on the story of the drop, one long-form video, a look book, and shop the story integration. This is Aime Leon Dore’s playbook and it doubles time on site.

Mobile: 78 percent of traffic will be mobile. The site is designed mobile first. Desktop is the fallback, not the reverse.

Load speed target: LCP under 1.6 seconds, mobile Lighthouse over 92. This drives conversion 30 percent above industry average.

Build: 6-week initial build with a Shopify Plus agency. Recommend Fuel Made, Electric Eye, or Underwaterpistol. Budget 65,000 to 85,000 for initial build. Ongoing dev retainer 6,000 per month.

4. Drop Mechanics

Four seasonal drops per year, matching the apparel calendar.

Drop day flow: - 8 a.m. ET: Black Card members get first look via app push and email, 48-hour window at Black Card pricing. - Day 2, 8 a.m. ET: Studio members get access, 24-hour window at Studio pricing. - Day 3, 8 a.m. ET: Access members get in at Access pricing. - Day 4, 12 p.m. ET: Public opens at full retail.

This tier stagger is the entire retention loop. Members feel the tier every quarter. Non-members feel the door.

Waitlist: email capture on out of stock, powered by Klaviyo Back in Stock. If a size restocks (rare), waitlist gets 24-hour first access before it goes public.

No pre-orders. No made-to-order. Scarcity requires actual scarcity. If a piece sells out, it sells out.

5. Membership-Linked Pricing

Non-member sees full retail. Access member sees 10 percent off, applied at cart via authenticated login. Studio member sees 15 percent off. Black Card sees 25 percent off plus first-look window.

Guest checkout: allowed for non-members only. Members must be logged in to see member pricing. This is a deliberate friction. It teaches members that logging in is the value.

Gift with membership activation: - Access: 20 percent off first apparel order in first 30 days - Studio: 30 percent off first order in 30 days - Black Card: Black Card Robe issued at activation, 30 percent off first order in 30 days

No promo codes. No affiliate codes. No influencer discount codes. The brand does not participate in the influencer economy on price. Influencers are seeded product and paid a flat fee for content, never a code.

6. Fulfillment

Decision: 3PL, not in-house.

Reasoning: in-house fulfillment at 320,000 Y1 revenue means one full-time picker-packer plus rent on 1,200 square feet of Charlotte warehouse plus insurance plus tech. Fully loaded that is 110,000 per year. A 3PL at Y1 volume costs 45,000 to 60,000 per year and scales. In-house makes sense at 3M annual DTC volume, which is Y3 at earliest.

3PL shortlist: - ShipBob (Charlotte fulfillment center is in Rock Hill SC, 22 miles from club, one-day turnaround to Charlotte customers) - ShipMonk (Fort Mill SC, similar distance) - Deliverr (Amazon-adjacent, faster shipping but less brand control on unboxing)

Recommendation: ShipBob Rock Hill. Same-day pickup from club is possible for Charlotte local orders which is a killer feature. Local delivery under 15 miles gets an in-club pickup option (free) or a courier via Roadie (12 dollars flat). Both drive local retention.

Unboxing: matte black recycled mailer with gold foil crest, tissue paper wrap, thank-you card signed digitally by Taj, care card with fabric story, one small sample or sticker per order. Landed unboxing cost: 4.20 per order. This is the physical brand experience for the 79,200 people who cannot visit Charlotte.

Returns: 45-day window, exchange for free, refund minus 8 dollar handling. Loop Returns portal steers to exchange 62 percent of the time. Sale items final sale.

Shipping: free over 175, 8 dollars flat under 175, expedited at cost. International Y2.

7. Wholesale Test

One wholesale door in Y1. Not more.

Target: a single Charlotte or Asheville boutique with brand-appropriate positioning. Candidates: - Capitol (Charlotte, luxury multi-brand) - Poole Shop (Charlotte, contemporary) - Slate Interiors adjacent (Asheville, lifestyle)

Structure: 5 SKU capsule from Track B athleisure only, 60/40 wholesale margin, 12-week exclusive, no ecommerce license.

This proves the wholesale story for Y3 when a real wholesale program launches through 12 to 20 doors nationally. Y1 is a single-door test.

No Nordstrom, no Neiman, no Saks in Y1 or Y2. Department stores flatten the brand story and slow payment terms crush the cash cycle at this scale.

8. Content and Photography

Every drop shoots on Taj plus two additional models drawn from the member community. Never agency-signed models exclusively. The models are the members. This is the story.

Shot list per drop: - 12 hero e-comm shots per SKU (front, back, three-quarter, detail, on model, on flat, motion, in-context) - 1 editorial film, 60 to 90 seconds, shot in-club - 1 long-form video for the drop editorial page, 3 to 5 minutes - 15 to 20 UGC-style shots for Klaviyo and paid social

Production budget per drop: 45,000 to 60,000. Shot in Charlotte in-club plus one exterior location (uptown, Camp North End, or a lake house within 90 minutes).

Photographer and director: contract a Charlotte or Atlanta based creative director for a 12-month retainer. Shortlist to identify. Not a New York agency. The story is the South.

9. Paid Acquisition

Y1 paid budget: 8,000 per month. Meta and TikTok only. No Google Shopping. No affiliate networks.

Y2 paid budget: 24,000 per month, adds Google Search on brand terms and one YouTube pre-roll test.

CAC target: under 42 for a first-time DTC customer. LTV target Y1: 190. Break even at 2.1 orders per customer, which happens at month 8 based on modeled cohort behavior.

Meta creative: 60 percent Taj-led editorial, 40 percent UGC. Never stock. Never generic athletic.

Northbeam attribution instead of Meta pixel. Meta lies about attribution by 40 to 60 percent post-iOS 14.5. Northbeam gives the truth.

10. Email and SMS

Klaviyo flows Day 1: - Welcome series (5 emails over 14 days) - Browse abandonment - Cart abandonment (3 emails) - Post-purchase (thank you, care, review request, cross-sell) - Winback at 60 days no purchase - Drop reminder flow (T-14, T-7, T-1, day-of)

SMS via Klaviyo: opt-in at checkout, drop day only, no promotional blasts.

Frequency ceiling: 2 marketing emails per week maximum. 1 SMS per month maximum outside drop days. The brand does not spam.

List size targets: 12,000 email Y1, 45,000 by end of Y2. SMS list 3,500 Y1, 14,000 Y2.

11. Y1 P&L Snapshot

Revenue: 320,000 COGS: 128,000 (40 percent, blended after tier discounts) Fulfillment (3PL, shipping, packaging): 42,000 Payment processing (2.6 percent Shopify): 8,300 SaaS stack: 70,000 Paid acquisition: 96,000 Photography and content: 210,000 (shared with in-club campaigns, allocate 50 percent to DTC: 105,000) Agency retainer: 72,000 Contribution before merchandising lead payroll: negative 201,000

DTC does not carry itself in Y1. It carries itself starting in Q3 of Y2 at roughly 1.4M annualized. That is the plan. Underwriting DTC’s Y1 loss is the price of building the brand extension that Y3 depends on.