Who Flamel works with: three roles, three needs

Who Flamel works with comes down to three people at companies in the creative industries that want to scale digitally: founders, CMOs and heads of product. Each one arrives with a different need, and the three needs get stuck in the same place, between marketing and product. Flamel is the growth team none of them has inside, and it works with the three at once.

The roles are not job titles to tick. They are the three chairs where growth gets decided in a company that already sells: who pays for it, who brings the customers, and who decides whether those customers stay.

What follows answers the four questions Flamel answers everywhere, what it is, what it does, what makes it different and who it is for, from those three chairs. It ends with the one number the three share.

Flamel works with founders, CMOs and heads of product at creative companies that want to scale digitally. The founder needs growth thinking without a fixed team, the CMO needs campaigns tested and tied to the website, and the head of product needs to know what makes users stay. Flamel works with the three at once.

Key takeaways

• Flamel works with founders, CMOs and heads of product at creative companies that want to scale digitally.
• Each arrives with one need: growth thinking without fixed costs, campaigns that get tested, or users who stay.
• The three needs meet between marketing and product, so Flamel works inside both teams at once.
• On the worked store, 1,125 of 3,000 orders come from returning customers: €76,500 a year that no single chair owns.
• Subtract customers from orders, divide by orders, and ask which of the three chairs owns that number today.

Who Flamel works with: the three chairs

Flamel is the growth partner of the creative industries. The definition, phrase by phrase is published on its own. The companies it works with are grouped by how their own customers buy, in drops, from a catalog, by subscription, by season or on commission, and not by sector.

Inside each of those companies, the work starts with one of three people. Each one sees a different part of the same problem, and each one arrives with a need that can be said in one sentence.

The founder: without fixed costs

The need: the company already sells and is growing, and the founder needs someone to think about growth with them, without carrying the fixed costs of a team of their own.

The fixed cost is easy to price. One growth hire in Spain costs about €58,200 a year with employer contributions, before the first result, and one person still cannot cover the website, the offer, the traffic and the measurement alone.

From this chair, Flamel sits with the founder to choose the one bet worth the next cycle, builds what the experiment needs and reads the result from the company's own data. For a founder weighing that cost, what an ecommerce growth agency fee should weigh sets any quote against online revenue.

The CMO: tested, not shipped

The need: the team produces campaigns and content, but nobody tests what works or connects marketing with the website and the product.

From this chair, Flamel works inside the marketing team so that each campaign ships with a question and a rule for reading it, and the answer comes from real customers before the next one is planned. Paid traffic is bought only to learn something by a date. Flamel for CMOs tells this chair in full.

The head of product: users who stay

The need: the product has users, but nobody knows what makes them stay, or how to make product and marketing push the same way.

In a store, the users who stay are the customers who come back. Counting repeat buyers is how that need gets a number. From this chair, Flamel reads what the people who come back did before they returned, and turns it into what the next release, page or launch is built to repeat. In a SaaS product, the same chair reads the second week instead of the second order.

Where the three needs get stuck

Read the three needs side by side and they point at the same gap. The founder pays for growth. The CMO's campaign brings the first order. The product, the store and what happens after delivery decide the second. Each chair owns a part, and the part between marketing and product has no owner.

Casey Winters, who worked on growth at Pinterest, describes the old split in his essay on what growth teams are for. Product teams “were in charge of creating a product people loved”, and marketing teams “were in charge of getting people to try the product”. His conclusion: “This is why marketing can't be in charge of all growth initiatives. They don't have access or capability to the most important ones.” He also names the biggest area a growth team usually works on: retention, the part that sits between the two.

That is why Flamel works with the three at once, inside the marketing and product teams rather than next to them. One chair alone can move its own number and still leave the gap where it was.

The number the three share

The worked store this blog uses, as an example: 300,000 sessions a year, a €68 average order and 1 order for every 100 sessions. That makes 3,000 orders and €204,000 a year. At 1.6 orders per customer, those orders come from 1,875 customers.

Repeat orders  = orders − customers = 3,000 − 1,875 = 1,125
Repeat share   = 1,125 ÷ 3,000 = 37.5 of every 100 orders
Repeat revenue = 1,125 × €68 = €76,500 of €204,000

That €76,500 is the revenue no single chair owns. The campaign did not bring it, and the product page alone did not keep it. Every point of repurchase among those 1,875 customers is 18.75 second orders, €1,275 a year.

Finding where a store loses those customers first, priced on its own numbers, is what The Conversion Audit does in five business days.

What makes Flamel different in every chair

The answer is the same from all three:

• Inside, not next to. It works inside marketing and product, so the gap between them has someone in it.
• Real customers, not opinions. Each cycle tests with the company's own customers and is read from its own data.
• One answer per cycle. A cycle closes with a number and a paragraph that says what changes, not with a list of tasks delivered.
• What stays. The map, the record of each cycle and the measurement belong to the company, whether or not it hires the next step.

What Flamel does not do in any chair

It does not do fieldwork: what happens in the shop, at an event or on site stays with the company's own team. It does not promise a conversion or an activation number. It promises the map and the reading. And it does not run campaigns that never end: paid traffic is a test instrument, with a budget and a date.

The number for your own company

Repeat share   = (orders − customers) ÷ orders
Repeat revenue = (orders − customers) × average order

On the worked store: 37.5 of every 100 orders, and €76,500 a year.

What to do by Monday: take last year's orders and customers from the store's admin, subtract, divide, and ask which of the three chairs owns that number today. If the answer is nobody, that is the empty seat.

Work through this with your own numbers

I run a company that sells online. Last year the store had [orders] orders from [customers] customers, at an average order of [average order value]. Calculate the repeat orders as orders minus customers, the repeat share as repeat orders divided by all orders, and the repeat revenue as repeat orders × average order. Then calculate what one point of repurchase is worth: customers × 0.01 × average order. Finally, ask me who in the company owns that number today: the founder, the person who runs marketing, or the person who runs the product or the store. If nobody owns it, tell me which decisions about campaigns, product pages and what happens after delivery should be read against it first. Show every step of the arithmetic.

FAQ

Who does Flamel work with?

Founders, CMOs and heads of product at companies in the creative industries that want to scale digitally. The companies are grouped by how their own customers buy, in drops, from a catalog, by subscription, by season or on commission, rather than by sector.

What does Flamel do for a founder?

It thinks about growth with the founder without the fixed costs of a team of their own. It helps choose the one bet worth the next cycle, builds what the experiment needs and reads the result from the company's own data.

What does Flamel do for a CMO or a head of product?

For a CMO, each campaign ships with a question and is read from real customers before the next one. For a head of product, it reads what the people who stay did first, and turns it into what the next release or launch is built to repeat.

How does working with Flamel start?

With a map: the Digital Experience Blueprint, five business days and $500. For a store it is The Conversion Audit, for a SaaS product The Activation Audit, and the map stays with the company whether or not it hires the next step.

The Conversion Audit maps where your store loses customers: five business days, $500, and the map stays with you whether or not you hire anyone next.