Skincare Brand Beats Sales Forecasts Despite Supply Chain Challenges

Challenge

2025 brought a wave of supply chain and cash flow challenges, with frequent out-of-stock periods for key products. This posed two major risks:
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1. Lost sales opportunities during high-demand periods.



2. Higher acquisition costs as the brand shifted focus toward bringing in new customers without the full product line available.
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Despite these hurdles, Urban Skin Rx aimed to hit every monthly revenue forecast and keep new customer acquisition profitable.

Strategy

To overcome these obstacles, the media plan focused on diversifying acquisition channels and leaning into creatives that directly addressed customer pain points.Multi-Channel Presence: Leveraged Google, Facebook/Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, and Shopify ads to capture attention across discovery, consideration, and conversion stages.



• Creative Angle:



- Before-and-after transformations showing real results.



- UGC skincare journeys highlighting visible improvement after 14 days.



- Problem-solution messaging tailored for first-time buyers.



• Budget Prioritization:



- Increased investment in top-of-funnel cold campaigns to drive new customer volume.



- Kept retargeting efficient to maintain ROAS from returning customers.

Execution

• Monitored inventory weekly and optimized ad creative toward in-stock SKUs to avoid wasted spend.



• Shifted budgets dynamically across platforms to align with forecast pacing.



• Used UGC and educational ads to reduce friction for first-time buyers and improve conversion from cold traffic.



• Added TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube to the channel mix to provide fresh entry points and help lower new customer acquisition costs, compared to relying solely on our primary channels—Google and Facebook/Instagram—which are highly competitive and saturated.Creatives that ran in this period;

RESULTS

January 1, 2025 to July 31, 2025

Despite facing stock challenges, Urban Skin Rx not only stayed on track but exceeded its forecast for the period:

Revenue vs Forecast:  Surpassed the forecast by a solid margin, achieving 102% of the goal.

New Customer Orders: While slightly below last year’s H1 total, the H1 new customer orders were in line with the forecast, demonstrating strong customer acquisition despite stock constraints.



Ad Spend: Allocated strategically to maximize return and support new customer acquisition efforts, ensuring spend was aligned with revenue and profitability targets.



NCAC (New Customer Acquisition Cost): Maintained a healthy and efficient acquisition cost, consistent with previous periods and helping sustain profitability.



AOV (Average Order Value): Stayed steady, confirming that new customer acquisition remained profitable despite external challenges.

Takeaways:

Even in a constrained year, Urban Skin Rx successfully navigated stock challenges, using a combination of diversified channels, problem-focused creative, and agile budget allocation to meet or exceed every monthly forecast, remaining profitable throughout the period.