Who they are

Etta Loves is a science-led baby brand, best known for its sensory muslins and playmats designed around how a baby's vision actually develops. The products are a firm favorite among new parents: and, just as importantly, among people buying for new parents. It is a brand people discover through a friend, a gift, or a new arrival.

That gifting dynamic sits underneath everything in the data, and it shapes how the business reads its growth numbers. A large share of orders are presents, not self-purchases: which means the people buying are often not the end-users, and a single-time buyer is frequently a delighted gifter expanding the brand's reach.

Celebrating ten years of trading, the brand brought a rich, healthy dataset and a forward-looking question: with ten years of orders to look at, which emerging patterns reflect how the business is accelerating today?

What we did

A bespoke Commercial Diagnostic built on the brand's own Shopify exports (orders, customers, and products) covering their full trading history from launch to the present day.

Most standard reporting tools look at either all-time totals or a recent snapshot. We deliberately did both and put them side-by-side. A decade of data is excellent for structural truths that need scale to be meaningful: overall brand loyalty patterns, geographic expansion, and seasonal rhythm. Meanwhile, analyzing the last twelve months independently highlights emerging product pairings and today's most valuable customer cohorts.

To deliver maximum strategic clarity, we built the analysis around two distinct lenses:

• The lifetime view: the big, slow-moving foundational truths across the brand's decade of history.
• The last-twelve-months view: what is driving growth right now: current bundling behavior, today's top customer segments, and modern reorder timing.

Every figure was analyzed on aggregated data only, with no individual customer names, email addresses, or personal details reproduced anywhere in the work.

What we found

All revenue figures, order volumes, customer counts, and financial metrics remain strictly confidential. What follows are the strategic opportunities identified:

1. Identifying today's highest-performing multi-item bundles

Analyzing recent trading patterns alongside lifetime data revealed a clear evolution in customer purchasing behavior. While specific accessories dominated historical baskets, the last twelve months showed a shift toward new, high-value product pairings driving multi-item orders. Highlighting today's active basket drivers gives the team a clear roadmap for current site merchandising and promotional focus.

2. Uncovering strong repeat momentum in recent cohorts

Measured across all time, the brand reflects typical gifting dynamics where many shoppers buy for a single occasion. However, isolating customers active in the last twelve months revealed a materially higher repeat purchase rate. Recent customer cohorts are demonstrating stronger direct brand loyalty than lifetime averages suggest, revealing a highly engaged customer base ready for dedicated lifecycle retention sequences.

3. Validating genuine basket growth and merchandising strength

Average order value has climbed steadily for years. The diagnostic confirmed that average price per item stayed essentially flat while the number of items per basket grew. This proved that revenue growth was driven by superior product proposition and effective basket building rather than price increases alone, representing highly defensible commercial progress.

4. Mapping the precise window for re-engagement

By mapping the time between first and second orders, we identified two distinct returning customer groups: an eager audience returning quickly post-birth, and a longer-tail gifting audience returning for subsequent milestones. This provided the blueprint for a tailored two-stage re-engagement strategy aligned perfectly with customer behavior.

5. Turning the gifting dynamic into a strategic advantage

Because so many purchases are gifts, every order introduces a new family to the brand. Recognizing gifters and recipients as distinct customer profiles opens up tailored post-purchase journeys, gift-packaging opportunities, and secondary nursery upsells that standard e-commerce reporting misses.

A baseline for repeatable performance

By applying two distinct analytical lenses, the diagnostic did more than highlight current growth drivers: it established an active benchmark for future strategy. The lifetime view provides long-term context, while the twelve-month view serves as a live baseline.

Running this analysis periodically allows the brand to measure progress like-for-like on the exact metrics that reflect how their business operates today, ensuring future decisions are always backed by recent, high-intent customer data.

Who this applies to

Etta Loves operates in the baby sensory space, but these principles apply to any brand with established trading history. If any of these sound familiar, separating your historical context from your recent data can unlock your next phase of growth:

• You have several years of sales history and want to identify which emerging trends reflect today's customer.
• A significant share of your orders are gifts, and you want to segment gifters from self-purchasers.
• Your recent trading feels significantly stronger than long-term historical metrics imply.
• You want to confirm which product pairings and bundles are driving top basket size today.
• You need an actionable, recent data baseline to guide next month's merchandising and marketing strategy.

In every case, separating long-term history from current momentum turns customer data into a precise, high-leverage growth engine.