A measured analysis of customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and the Subscribe & Save engine — built directly from Amazon's cohort data and the Subscribe & Save subscriber dashboard. The goal: a clear, defensible view of unit economics for ad-spend decisions and the upcoming fundraise.
We acquire customers on Amazon at $15. Over 24 months, the average customer generates $95 in revenue and $10 in net profit after every cost — including the ads that brought them in. Subscribe & Save subscribers, who make up roughly 1 in 5 acquisitions, generate $365 in revenue over the same window. The strategic engine is SNS.
The blended unit economics are healthy: $6.47 returned per ad dollar over 24 months places Willa's in the "good" range for CPG brands on Amazon. The story gets stronger when split by customer type — a Subscribe & Save subscriber returns $25 per ad dollar while a one-time buyer returns $5. The fundraise narrative isn't about fixing unit economics; it's about scaling acquisition while accelerating SNS conversion to lift the blend.
Every number in this report can be traced to one of three measured Amazon datasets: the cumulative LTV cohort export, the Subscribe & Save subscriber dashboard, and the 12-month profitability export. The math behind the headline number is straightforward.
From Amazon's cumulative LTV cohort data, weighted by cohort size across the last 12 months of acquisitions. This represents what a customer acquired today is worth — not what was true in the brand's early days.
First month: $40.33. Repeat purchases compound from there. Through month 11 the data is directly observed; months 12-24 are projected using the observed monthly decay pattern (a conservative method).
After Amazon's selling fees, our cost of goods, shipping, refunds, and promotional discounts, we keep 25.5% of every dollar of revenue as contribution margin. This is computed directly from the trailing-12-month profitability export.
This is what's left from a customer's revenue before we count the cost of the ads that brought them in.
We paid $14.75 in advertising on average to acquire each customer. That is subtracted from contribution profit to get true net profit per customer:
Real, take-home profit per customer over 24 months — after every cost, including ads.
In the last 12 months we acquired 5,713 new-to-brand customers. If they each generate $9.58 of net profit over the next 24 months:
From this year's customer acquisitions alone — and before counting the SNS premium on the subset that converts to subscriptions, or anyone we acquire next year.
The $14.75 CAC is calculated as total ad spend divided by total new-to-brand customers — a "blended" CAC that includes both customers acquired through paid ads and those who came organically. On Amazon, paid and organic acquisition are deeply intertwined: ad clicks drive A9 ranking, ranking drives organic visibility, and brand search is partially paid-induced. Separating them into "true paid CAC" and "organic CAC" assumes a separation that doesn't exist in practice. The blended number is the operating reality of the channel and the standard metric Amazon-native brands report.
Customers are not profitable on the day they buy. Their first month with us they spend an average of $40 — after our 25.5% margin we keep $10.28, but we paid $14.75 in ads to get them, leaving us underwater by $4.47 on that first transaction. This is normal for CPG. Almost no food brand profits on first purchase; the entire model depends on customers coming back.
Over the next two months, customers add another ~$22 of revenue. By month 3 they've spent $62 total and we cross into profit. Every month after that is pure upside: profit per customer grows steadily through month 24, where it reaches $9.58. The table below shows the full picture.
| Time Since Acquisition | Cumulative Revenue (what they spent with us) |
× 25.5% Margin (what we keep before ads) |
− $14.75 CAC (what the ads cost) |
Net Profit Per Customer (what we actually earn) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day they buy (Month 0) | $40.33 | $10.28 | $14.75 | −$4.47 |
| 3 months later | $61.66 | $15.72 | $14.75 | +$0.97 |
| 6 months later | $73.47 | $18.73 | $14.75 | +$3.98 |
| 9 months later | $81.94 | $20.89 | $14.75 | +$6.14 |
| 12 months later | $87.22 | $22.24 | $14.75 | +$7.49 |
| 18 months later | $92.46 | $23.58 | $14.75 | +$8.83 |
| 24 months later | $95.42 | $24.33 | $14.75 | +$9.58 |
This profile means our ad-spend horizon decisions are flexible. At current CAC, every customer is profitable by month 3 — which gives us room to scale ad spend up to roughly $25 per customer and still hit healthy payback within 9-12 months. Beyond that, the math gets thin; we'd need to lift SNS conversion above the current 1-in-5 rate to justify higher acquisition costs.
Currently 38% of Willa's revenue comes from Subscribe & Save subscribers. Industry typical for CPG on Amazon is 15-25%. We've been as high as 51% (mid-2024). The SNS engine is the central asset of the business and the focal point of this analysis.
Amazon's Subscribe & Save dashboard segments subscribers into three states: "Established" (long-tenured, multi-delivery), "Growing" (recent active subscribers), and "Lost" (subscribers who have churned). All three segments outperform non-subscribers significantly. Weighted across segments, the average SNS subscriber generates $365 over 24 months — nearly 5× a non-subscriber's $76.
Amazon reports SNS retention at two horizons: 79.6% retain past 30 days, but only 56.0% past 90 days. Roughly 44% of new subscribers churn before their third delivery. This is the highest-leverage operational issue in the analysis: each subscriber retained past 90 days is worth dramatically more than one who churns at delivery 1 or 2, and the difference between "good" and "great" SNS retention compounds across thousands of customers.
Amazon's "Sales by Deliveries" data shows that subscriptions with 2+ deliveries drive 83% of all SNS revenue. Subscribers who cancel after 1 delivery generate ~14%; active 1-delivery subscribers are 3%. The single highest-leverage retention move is making sure new SNS subscribers receive and engage with their second delivery. Likely interventions: bimonthly cadence as the default for some SKUs (especially the 8.25oz Kids SKUs where monthly is too aggressive), a "welcome to your subscription" insert in the first box, or quality-check on whether second-delivery timing aligns with how fast customers actually drink the product.
This is the most important diagnostic in the report. Looking at LTV at month 5 — the longest horizon where every cohort from each year has full observed data — customer quality has stepped down meaningfully from 2023 to 2024, then drifted slightly from 2024 to 2025.
The big step-down was 2023 → 2024 (-26%). The 2023 cohorts were exceptional — early product-market fit, less competition in the organic oat milk space, and (likely) a higher SNS attach rate at the time when the brand was building velocity. That level isn't repeatable, and the analysis treats 2024-2025 as the realistic baseline.
The 2024 → 2025 change is much smaller (-7%) — modest decline, not collapse. More recent cohorts include more Kids' line acquisitions (lower entry AOV by SKU mix) and customers acquired during competitive Q4 windows. Both are deliberate strategic choices to expand the franchise. The recent-cohort baseline of $65-70 at M5 is solid CPG territory.
For investor materials, anchor on last-12-months cohort numbers, not the 2023 vintage. Anchoring to $128 LTV (which only the 2023 cohorts achieved) sets up a credibility problem if investors do their own analysis. The recent-cohort baseline of $65-70 at M5, projecting to $87-95 at M24, is the honest defensible number. The SNS premium and the long retention tail still tell a strong story on top of that — and the $25-per-ad-dollar SNS return remains the standout metric.