Where Premium Brands Come To Grow
WHERE PREMIUM BRANDS COME TO GROW
Almost every brand discounts, and most discount more than they did a year ago. But new data from Klaviyo and ProfitPeak, covering thousands of brands across Australia, New Zealand and beyond, reveals an uncomfortable truth: the brands discounting hardest grow the least and profit the least. And for premium, considered brands, the damage runs deeper […]
This week I had two conversations that looked like complete opposites and turned out to be the same conversation. One founder had spent five hours making a single Reel, only to realise the lifetime return on that effort was a couple of hours of attention at best. Another, far more seasoned, has had a difficult […]
Catherine spent two weeks being her own ideal customer – shopping the end-of-financial-year sales for a frying pan, a kombucha kit, a yoghurt kit and linen pyjamas – and turned it into a live case study of how premium buyers actually shop in 2026. She clicked plenty of Meta ads, and not one of them […]
Two cracking weeks, then a sudden dip – and every instinct says the same thing: the ads are broken. In this episode, Catherine walks through what happened when she had exactly that moment, went looking, and found nothing had changed on Meta or Google at all. What had changed was the Reserve Bank. With rates […]
This week, four conversations with four premium brand founders all rhymed – and they all traced back to the same piece of advice from a big group coaching program: chase the angle with the most mass appeal. In this episode, Catherine unpacks why mass appeal is a trap for premium brands – how the broadest […]
What if your best-looking month was actually your worst? In one month, Catherine’s skincare brand Indagare brought in 597 new customers – and it turned out to be one of the worst months the business had. In this episode, Catherine opens her own books to show why, using a rare near-controlled experiment: the same brand, […]
Summary Twenty-one years ago, heavily pregnant and launching her first business from her kitchen table, Catherine’s old boss told her she’d never be successful working from home. In this personal episode, she shares the sliding doors moment that followed – and the honest truth about what actually made her first business, Cushie Tushies, work. Because […]
In early March 2026, Meta restructured its entire attribution model – and the change has disproportionately punished premium ecommerce brands because of the way considered buyers actually shop. In this episode, Catherine unpacks what happened, why premium brands got hit hardest, and the strategic foundation shift that lets premium brands stop chasing platform updates and […]
You started this business for two reasons – meaningful work, and more freedom over your time. Somewhere in year two or three, that deal stopped working. You’re working harder than you did at your old job, for less money, with less time on the parts of the business you actually love. Drowning in marketing decisions […]
Marketing is the hat that doesn’t come off. If you’re running a premium eCommerce brand and you’ve been quietly burning out – not from the hours but from the cognitive weight – this episode is for you. We explore three structural properties that make the marketing function qualitatively different from every other hat a founder […]