From $0 to $40K in five months.
Launching a premium men’s leather jacket brand in the US with Meta and Google Ads.
Five months, from first session to $40K.
A brand-new label with no sales history, launched into one of the most crowded categories in US menswear.
Total sales, Sep 2025 to Jan 2026
Sales in the five months before launch
Orders
Average order value
Blended MER on $17,776 of paid spend
Growth in monthly new customers, Oct to Jan
Sources: Shopify Analytics, Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads.
A $500 jacket from a brand nobody had heard of.
A new direct-to-consumer menswear label selling premium leather blazers, bombers, biker and moto jackets, launching into the US with a single brief: get to consistent, profitable daily sales as fast as possible.
Zero signal
A brand-new pixel with no purchase history for Meta or Google to learn from.
High price
$400 to $500 per jacket. Not an impulse buy from an unknown name.
Crowded category
US shoppers already served by heritage labels and big marketplaces.
No social proof
No reviews, no followers and no returning customers to lean on.
Two engines, three phases.
Meta creates demand. Google captures it. Budget follows what converts.
Create demand
Introduce the brand, build an engaged audience and generate the first purchase events.
Capture demand
Intercept active leather jacket shoppers, including people researching competing brands.
1. Build signal
Cheap traffic and audience building.
2. Find the engine
Test prospecting approaches head to head.
3. Concentrate
Put budget behind what converts.
Give the pixel people to learn from first.
Before asking Meta to find buyers, the first wave of spend went into low-cost audience building. It was not meant to sell. It was meant to make selling possible.
CPC on 853 link clicks for $792, seeding the pixel and growing a retargetable following.
CTR on 484 clicks at $0.84 CPC, keeping warm visitors close while purchase campaigns learned.
Total cost of giveaway pushes that added engagement and social proof to the page.
Source: Meta Ads Manager.
Letting the algorithm find the buyer won by 4x.
Advantage+ took 52% of Meta spend and delivered 80% of Meta purchases.
ROAS on $4,999. The carousel ad set alone hit 4.60x: 41 purchases, $20,170 in value.
ROAS on $1,957. Four purchases. Budget moved to the winner.
Source: Meta Ads Manager, Sep 1, 2025 to Jan 31, 2026.
$9.6K in spend, $24.8K in purchase value.
DPA retargeting had the highest CTR in the account and closed shoppers who needed a second look at a $500 purchase.
| Campaign | Spend | Clicks | CTR | Purch. | Value | ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advantage+ prospecting | $4,999 | 4,651 | 4.40% | 41 | $20,170 | 4.03x |
| Best sellers prospecting | $1,957 | 1,281 | 3.84% | 4 | $1,800 | 0.92x |
| DPA retargeting | $1,230 | 926 | 5.33% | 6 | $2,780 | 2.26x |
| Page likes / traffic | $792 | 853 | 3.44% | 0 | $0 | n/a |
| Brand retargeting | $404 | 484 | 4.57% | 0 | $0 | n/a |
| Giveaways (2) | $191 | n/a | n/a | 0 | $0 | n/a |
| Total Meta | $9,573 | 8,195 | 4.17% | 51 | $24,750 | 2.59x |
Source: Meta Ads Manager, platform-reported purchase value.
Conquesting competitors was the best Google play.
Expensive non-branded search ($2.53 CPC) was capped early. Shopify independently credits Google with $15.4K in sales.
| Campaign | Cost | Clicks | Conv. | Value | ROAS | Cost / conv. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US PMax, competitors | $2,055 | 3,820 | 13.3 | $6,139 | 2.99x | $154 |
| US PMax, core | $3,462 | 9,477 | 11.7 | $5,908 | 1.71x | $297 |
| US Standard Shopping | $631 | 835 | 4.0 | $1,820 | 2.88x | $158 |
| US Branded search | $150 | 40 | 1.0 | $450 | 2.99x | $150 |
| UK PMax (test) | $631 | 2,986 | 2.0 | $1,015 | 1.61x | $315 |
| Non-branded search, US + UK | $1,106 | 529 | 0 | $0 | n/a | n/a |
| PMax split tests (2) | $168 | 449 | 0 | $0 | n/a | n/a |
| Total Google | $8,204 | 18,136 | 32.0 | $15,332 | 1.87x | $256 |
Source: Google Ads, Oct 4, 2025 to Jan 31, 2026.
New customers compounded every month.
Traffic peaked in November. Conversion rate kept climbing, from about 0.1% in October to above 0.7% by late January. Fewer, better visitors. More of them buying.
First-time customers per month
One hero product carried the launch.
43% of total sales came from a classic black leather blazer: $17.2K, and the most visited landing page on the site (3,463 sessions).
Sessions
Added to cart · 2.79%
Reached checkout · 1.8%
Mobile share of sessions
Checkout completion (23% of checkouts finished) and size guidance to bring returns down from 14% of gross sales.
Source: Shopify Analytics, Sep 1, 2025 to Jan 30, 2026.
Before launch vs. the first five months.
| Metric | Before | First 5 months |
|---|---|---|
| Total sales | $0 | $40,261.68 |
| Orders | 0 | 88 |
| Average order value | n/a | $488.64 |
| Monthly first-time customers | 0 | 38 (January) |
| Total paid media spend | n/a | $17,776.36 |
| Blended MER (total sales / spend) | n/a | 2.26x |
| Best Meta ROAS (Advantage+ carousel) | n/a | 4.60x |
| Best Google ROAS (competitor PMax) | n/a | 2.99x |
Sources: Shopify Analytics, Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads.
What made the launch work.
Build signal before optimizing
Cheap traffic, page likes and giveaways gave a new pixel the data it needed.
Let Advantage+ find the buyer
Broad targeting with a carousel beat hand-picked audiences, 4.03x vs 0.92x.
Conquest the category leaders
The competitor PMax campaign became the most efficient Google campaign.
Cut what does not convert, fast
Expensive non-branded search was capped early and budget moved to proven formats.
Find the hero product early
A single leather blazer drove 43% of revenue and shaped the creative, landing pages and budget that followed.
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