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TLDR;
CPG brands are burning resources on micro-optimizations while missing massive strategic opportunities. Stop testing button colors and start fixing supply chains, checkout flows, and inventory management for real growth.
8 Minute Read
Bone-white business cards. Subtle embossing. Perfectly aligned fonts. Patrick Bateman famously spiraled over trivial details no one else noticed or cared about. Sound familiar?
If your ecommerce team is spending endless hours perfecting thumbnail borders, debating microscopic PPC changes, or fretting over button shades, it's time for a reality check. Modern DTC CPG brands have developed their own version of Bateman's obsessive compulsions, except instead of skincare routines, they're fixated on A/B testing variations that move metrics by fractions of a percent.
The morning routine of a typical ecommerce manager looks disturbingly similar to Bateman's skincare regimen: obsessive, meticulous, and ultimately meaningless. Checking Amazon Seller Central for the third time before 7 AM. Refreshing that button color A/B test where crimson performed 0.3% better than vermillion. Analyzing why the ACOS climbed from $0.89 to $0.98, within the acceptable range, but worth thirty minutes of anxiety.
Here's the brutal truth: only 1 in 7 A/B tests produces a winning variation, yet teams run endless variations while their checkout abandonment rate hovers at 70%. Just as Bateman's meticulous card comparisons never mattered to anyone else, these obsessive design debates become an exhausting cycle with minimal real-world impact.
Margin pressure, 83% marketing burnout, and stalled revenue aren’t side notes. They’re the reality for CPG brands stuck chasing fractional wins. In this blog, we unpack the ecommerce obsession spiral through Bateman’s lens, showing how attribution models, supply chain blind spots, and runaway ad costs trap brands in tactical chaos, and which strategic shifts actually unlock growth.
The Business Card Obsession: Attribution Gone Mad
“Look at that subtle off‑white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark.”
Replace “business card” with “attribution model” and you've captured every DTC marketing meeting since iOS 14.5 murdered third‑party tracking. The obsession has simply shifted from Bateman's paper-stock preferences to attribution windows and tracking methodologies.
The response? Mid‑size CPG brands are burning $50 K+ a month across platforms and then sinking more into attribution tools—Triple Whale, Northbeam, Rockerbox—each promising to solve what Apple broke. Meanwhile, leadership still can’t align on ROAS, marketing teams waste hours debating attribution windows, and investors are losing patience as customer acquisition costs climb quarter after quarter.
And the irony? Without clear attribution, brands can’t even make confident calls on where to scale spend, whether doubling down on Amazon ads, reallocating to Meta, or testing TikTok, so millions get funneled into guesswork instead of growth. This isn’t just theory. Research shows that brands can eliminate up to 94% of ad‑spend waste with proper attribution clarity.
What this means for operators: Attribution isn’t just a marketing headache—it’s a boardroom issue. Until you solve it, every budget conversation is built on shaky ground. The brands pulling ahead aren’t obsessing over attribution windows like Bateman over business cards; they’re building first-party data systems, aligning finance and marketing around a single source of truth, and using that clarity to fund supply chain improvements, Amazon dominance, and omnichannel expansion.
Supply Chain Psychosis: The Hidden Killer
Bateman's morning routine was precise, methodical, and completely disconnected from reality. Today's ecommerce teams follow a similar pattern: obsessive optimization of visible elements while ignoring systemic failures lurking beneath the surface.
Consider the modern CPG paradox: 90% of supply chain executives report significant challenges, yet snack brands debate homepage layouts while stockousupplts tank their Amazon rankings. Only 60% of companies have visibility into tier-one suppliers—meaning a surprise shortage in packaging or raw materials can ripple into lost retail deals. But sure, let’s A/B test that product description for the 47th time.
The shipping cost crisis exemplifies this misplaced focus. 80% of consumers won't buy without free shipping, turning what was once a competitive advantage into a margin-destroying expectation. Yet instead of addressing this fundamental challenge, teams optimize micro-interactions while their unit economics crumble.
Here’s the real cost: Stockouts don’t just frustrate customers. They sink Amazon search rankings, kill retail partnerships, and stall revenue across every channel. Free shipping isn’t a perk; it’s a margin drain that forces impossible math. Operators who win aren’t A/B testing product copy. They are investing in forecasting, visibility, and fulfillment systems that prevent the silent killers of growth.
The Reservation at Dorsia: Digital Ad Cost Reality
Bateman's desperate attempts to secure a table at Dorsia mirror today's DTC brands fighting over increasingly expensive digital real estate. The restaurant was always fully booked, just like prime advertising inventory—and the costs keep climbing.
Current digital advertising reality check:
Meta CPM averages $8.15, but spikes to $17.70 during peak periods
TikTok CPM sits at $2.97 (47% cheaper than Meta)
Amazon captured 18% year-over-year growth in CPG digital ad revenue
Meanwhile, CPG industry growth has noticeably slowed. Global consumer goods growth dropped from around 5% at the turn of the century to almost zero in recent years—forcing smaller brands into bidding wars with giants like Nestlé and P&G over shrinking digital shelf share.
Without reallocating spend toward fundamentals like Amazon operations, omnichannel expansion, and retention, brands are just paying more to run faster on the same treadmill.
Here’s what actually matters: Ad auctions are an inflation treadmill. Every brand pays more while the pie barely grows. Chasing cheaper clicks will not save you. What matters is diversifying channels, building retention engines, and using Amazon as a profit center instead of a budget sink. The brands pulling ahead are reallocating ad dollars toward fundamentals that compound, not costs that spiral.
The Confession: What Actually Drives Growth
Here’s the uncomfortable confession that would make Bateman’s video diary look rational: successful DTC brands didn’t win by obsessing over button shades. They won by mastering fundamentals—while competitors chased minutiae.
Away didn’t launch with luggage. They started with a coffee table book to build credibility and buzz before selling a single suitcase.
Dollar Shave Club stormed into the market with a viral video that racked up 26 million views—thanks not to CTA color but to razor-sharp brand positioning.
Bombas scaled massively—hitting over half a billion in sales—by rejecting Amazon and doubling down on community-driven branding and direct control.
In CPG, Liquid Death turned “tallboy water” into a $1.4 billion brand through shock-value marketing, irreverent visuals, and Gen-Z–driven identity.
Magic Spoon transformed cereal by focusing on supply chain optimization and subscription-first scaling—no homepage copy debates needed.
The data supporting strategic focus over tactical obsession is overwhelming:
Checkout optimization can increase conversions by 35%
Customer reviews can boost conversions by up to 270%
Design sprints deliver 7x time savings when properly scoped
AI personalization helped Adidas increase AOV by 259%
Here’s the point: None of the breakout CPG brands scaled because of pixel tweaks. They scaled because they tightened supply chains, built defensible brand equity, and chose channels strategically. Operators stuck in the minutiae are fighting for fractions while competitors who prioritize fundamentals are winning in multiples.
The Idea of "Strategic Success"
"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory."
Swap in “successful DTC brand,” and you’ve captured the ecommerce delusion perfectly: glossy Instagram posts and viral videos suggest strength, but lack the substance to survive real-world pressure.
The data tells another story. Stockouts aren’t just frustrating—they cost CPG retailers up to 7.4% of sales, equating to $82 billion lost in 2021 alone. That level of leakage isn’t noticed in vanity metrics—it’s eradicated by them.
Here’s the point: Appearance won’t withstand the test of supply chain shocks or investor scrutiny. The brands that endure aren’t the ones chasing aesthetics. They’re the ones obsessing over preventive systems, stocking accuracy, and margin integrity—while everyone else wonders why Bateman’s business card made headlines instead of how their fundamentals cracked under pressure.
Breaking Free From the Obsession Spiral
The chainsaw scene in American Psycho represents the violent end of obsessive behavior. For DTC brands, the equivalent is the brutal moment when tactical optimization meets market reality—and loses.
It's time to channel your inner psycho in the right direction. Instead of obsessing over meaningless details like Bateman, focus that same intensity on the fundamentals that actually drive revenue.
What Deserves Your Obsessive Attention
Think of these as your new morning routine—the strategic rituals that separate profitable brands from pretty websites:
1. Fix your inventory before you fix your fonts. 56% of CPG leaders now prioritize advanced inventory systems as their top initiative. Why? Because optimizing a product page for something you can't actually deliver is the ecommerce equivalent of Bateman's elaborate skincare routine for a face no one will remember.
2. Perfect your checkout, not your color palette. Reducing checkout form fields from 23 to 12 can improve conversions by 35%. That's not a marginal gain—that's transformational. Yet teams spend more time debating button shades than fixing the friction that's bleeding customers at the finish line.
3. Obsess over trust signals like Bateman obsessed over business cards. Reviews, security badges, and clear return policies create the credibility that actually converts browsers into buyers. These aren't nice-to-haves—they're the difference between looking legitimate and looking like a drop-shipping scam.
4. Master supply chain visibility with Bateman-level precision. Real-time inventory data prevents those brand-killing "sorry, that's actually out of stock" emails. Nothing destroys customer trust faster than promising what you can't deliver—it's the ecommerce equivalent of showing up to Dorsia without a reservation.
5. Choose channels strategically, not desperately. Bombas rejected Amazon to maintain brand control and hit $1.4 billion in revenue. Understanding when to embrace or reject platforms based on strategic goals requires the same calculated precision Bateman applied to his workout routine.
What's Killing Your Growth (Stop Immediately)
These are the ecommerce equivalent of Bateman's neurotic tics—behaviors that feel productive but accomplish nothing:
Button color A/B tests while your checkout flow has 23 form fields and a 70% abandonment rate. It's like polishing silverware while your kitchen burns down.
Micro-copy variations without understanding why customers actually leave. Testing "Buy Now" vs "Add to Cart" won't fix fundamental product-market fit issues.
Design sprints for solved problems. Spending three weeks "discovering" that customers want fast checkout is like Bateman analyzing which restaurant has the best atmosphere—everyone already knows the answer.
Vanity metric optimization that makes dashboards look good but doesn't connect to revenue. Celebrating time-on-site increases while conversion rates plummet is pure delusion.
Homepage animation debates that slow load times and annoy mobile users. Perfect parallax scrolling won't save a fundamentally broken customer experience.
