The summer sale finished on 31 August and the four weeks since have been quieter, which is what always happens after a sale and is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up. The last full week took £9,377 against £13,217 the week before. Set against the weeks before the sale rather than the weeks during it, we are still well ahead of where this business was a year ago. The year to date is up 67% on the same point last year, and August was the biggest month the shop has ever had.
The number I am actually watching is profit after advertising, and it has held: £16,039 this period against £16,361 last, on 11% less revenue. That is the advertising getting more efficient rather than the shop getting busier, and it is the better of the two problems to have.
Getting demand back up without reaching for another discount. The evidence from the last year is that a sale lifts a fortnight and then costs us the fortnight after, whereas a new collection holds for months. So the plan for October is a collection launch rather than a promotion, timed to run into the Black Friday period rather than compete with it.
Where We Stand
Last Full Week
£9,377
week of 07 Sep
Last 30 Days
£53,780
Last 90 Days
£148,308
Last 12 Months
£408,554
Weekly sales over the last eight complete weeks.
Profit After Advertising
Sales taken (inc VAT)
£53,780
Less returns (to date)
-£7,344
Net sales (ex-VAT)
£38,697
Gross profit (71.5% margin)
£27,668
Less advertising
-£11,519
Profit after advertising
£16,149
Average order value was £117 across 458 orders. Revenue is down about 13% on the previous 30 days. Advertising came to about 42% of our gross profit.
The Work Behind the Numbers
It is worth setting out everything that sits behind these numbers, because a lot of it is hands on and never shows up on a sales chart. This is really two separate jobs: the marketing and growth side, and the day to day operations of the shop. Both currently run through one desk, week in, week out.
Marketing and growth
Writing and sending all the customer and retail sale emails to our subscribers
All social media, and creating the product photography
All paid advertising on Google and Meta: the adverts, the words, the strategy and the budgets
Writing all the blog and SEO articles that bring free traffic to the website
Website work behind the scenes for SEO and our Google rankings
Planning the creative and the campaigns for our sales
Operations and fulfilment
Taking all the incoming calls
Picking and packing every order
Taking the parcels to Royal Mail
Handling all the refunds and returns as they come in
Answering all the emails, customer questions and complaints
A few numbers from the marketing side recently:
Customer Emails Sent
0
Social Posts Created
15
Customer Groups
11
Rival Brands Tracked
30
Reporting has been brought back up to date this week, including a fix to how website traffic is counted. See the note under Where Our Sales Come From.
Our Advertising
Our advertising runs at around £384 a day, roughly 21p in every £1 of sales. That is a controlled, efficient level for a normal month.
Channel
Spend a day
Google
£140
Meta
£244
Across Meta and Google we spent £11,694 over the last 30 days, and the shop took £54,330, which is about £4.65 in sales for every pound before returns. I judge the advertising on that figure, the shop's own, rather than on what the platforms report about themselves, because they each claim credit for sales the other one made.
Meta is doing most of the work at the moment. Google has weakened since the sale ended: it had been selling a discount, and the cost of each click has nearly trebled since May as the autumn auctions start. This week I have cleaned out the wasted search terms and built a new autumn and boots set-up for it, which is what sells at this time of year. That set-up is ready to switch on, and I will report on how it does in the next edition.
The other change this month is that each shoe is now held to its own return rate rather than one blended target. Some lines come back at under 5% and others at over half, and treating those the same was quietly costing money.
How the two channels work together
Top of the funnel · Meta
Builds the brand and puts our shoes in front of people who are not searching yet
▼
They remember us, then come back and search
▼
Bottom of the funnel · Google
Captures them at the moment they are ready to buy
This is why Meta's own figure looks small but still matters: it feeds the demand that Google then converts into sales.
Our Shoes
We have 32 shoes on sale at the moment. Here are the five earning us the most over the last 90 days, and they are also among the ones customers are happiest to keep.
The styles that come back too often, mostly down to a narrow fit
Best selling shoes (after returns)
Sales
Returns
Brecon Chelsea Boot
£25,289
14%
Banff Penny Loafer
£10,016
30%
Guildhall Capped Oxfords (Imperfect)
£8,970
9%
Castle Chukka Boot
£7,747
22%
Monkton Double Monk Shoes
£6,848
17%
Running low, need ordering now:
Tanner Derby Shoes, -0.9 weeks left
Portus Suede Loafer, -0.3 weeks left
Stokes Brogue Derby Shoes, -0.2 weeks left
Ethan Plain Calf Suede Loafer, 0.8 weeks left
Portus Loafer, 1.3 weeks left
Lucan Semi-Brogues (Imperfect), 4.5 weeks left
Brecon Chelsea Boot, 6.5 weeks left
Coming back most often:
Portus Loafer, 47%
Hill Chelsea Suede Boot, 39%
Tanner Derby Shoes, 37%
Portus Suede Loafer, 36%
Ethan Plain Tumbled Grain Loafer, 33%
Our Customers
Over the last 30 days, the average order was £117 and about 9% of orders came from returning customers, people who have bought from us before.
Returning visitors are 4.0% of users, which is low and is the single biggest opportunity in the business. We acquire well and we do not yet bring people back well. The email programme is the cheapest lever on it and it is where I want to spend the autumn.
Where Our Sales Come From
The website had 38,881 visits from the UK over the last 30 days, converting to orders at about 1.2%.
The total looks far higher, 149,352, because since 14 September an automated swarm, mostly routed through Singapore, has been hitting every page on the site. None of it views a page, none of it comes from our advertising, and it costs nothing. It does make any conversion rate worked out on the total meaningless, so every rate in this report is worked out on UK visitors only.
Paid social remains the largest source of new customers and paid search the most efficient. Email is small in sessions and disproportionate in orders, which is the usual pattern and an argument for sending more of it rather than less.
Stock and Cash
Pairs in Stock
3,576
Styles Not Selling
3
About to Sell Out
7
3 styles are not selling at all: Aviemore Brogue Boot, Oban Chukka Boot, Bale Chelsea Boot (629 pairs tied up). A sale is the natural moment to clear these. Several styles are about to sell out against an eight week wait to restock, so the reorder decision and any sale stock check are best done together, to be sure we never promote a shoe we cannot send.
What I Recommend
#
Recommendation
1
Switch on the new autumn boots set-up in GoogleGoogle is still running on a single set of ads from July last year, with nothing for boots in the season boots sell.
2
Launch a new collection in October rather than run a promotionOur own history: discounts lift for days and then cost us the following fortnight. A new collection held for 140 days.
3
Reorder the six lines at risk of selling outEight week lead time means anything decided after October lands too late to sell.
4
Clear the 233 units sitting in two dead stylesThey have not moved and they are holding cash and shelf space.
5
Publish the rebuilt websiteIt is finished. Every visitor we pay for is still landing on the old one.
Decisions I Need From You
Approve the October collection launch and its stock. Needs deciding now because of the eight week lead time.
Confirm Harry full time. The operation cannot be half covered through the busiest quarter of the year.
What Happens Next
October to December is the part of the year that decides it. Last year that quarter took £90,783 and it was up 69% on the year before, before any of the current setup was running. January is not a quiet month for us either; this January took £39,169, up 106%. On our own monthly figures the year lands somewhere between £322,000 and £380,000, with about £358,000 the likeliest. The rebuilt website is finished and waiting to be published, and none of that forecast assumes a single extra sale from it.
Your Thoughts
Any thoughts or feedback?
JOHN WHITE SHOES · EST. 1919 · PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL · PREPARED BY ARKISH PATEL · SEPTEMBER 2026
