Chris Nawrocki

Heur

An award-winning DTC as a service agency, helping brands achieve their full potential with best-in-class management, strategy and delivery.

Our clients include Drake’s, H&M, Toni & Guy, Union Coffee, Derek Rose, Private White VC, Jaded London, Nectar, Tangle Teezer, Ministry of Sound and many more.

You do the brand and the product - we do the rest.

Our services:

- Ecommerce Consultancy
- Ecommerce Strategy and Roadmapping
- VC Stewardship
- Fractional & Fully-Managed Ecommerce Support
- Paid Media Management
- Social Media & CRM Management
- Creative Support

DTC As A Service | Ecommerce Consultant | CCO & Founder

Solv - C-suite as a service

Working with clients to launch or grow their tech, service or Ecommerce proposition, develop their B&M business, or scale in new territories.

Co-Founder | CMO Specialist

Out To Sea

Consulting Director Of eCommerce Strategy. Covering non-linior multi-channel forecasts and client growth strategies.

Fractional Director Of Ecommerce Strategy | CMO

Whistle Digital

Pure play end-to-end Ecommerce business and digital growth strategy agency specialising in D2C fashion retail.

Primary focused on venture capital stewardship and due diligence.

Director Of Ecommerce Strategy | CMO

les girls les boys

Achievements:
• Overhauling end to end Ecommerce and business process to deliver a model fit for growth.
• Owning all marketing / Ecommerce and product. 
• Delivering 600% YoY growth with a further 1200% growth forecast for year close.

Fractional CMO | Ecommerce growth strategist

AQ/AQ

Fractional CMO | Director Of Ecommerce

The Ragged Priest

Achievements:
• Re launched website to deliver 30% YoY growth
• Overhauled operational tech stack to reduce the operational time needed by 70%+

Duke & Dexter

Achievements:
• Relaunched website delivering 20% YoY growth
• Rebuilt international growth strategy delivering 25% growth in key regions
• Took the business through securing investment and owning due diligence

Fractional Ecommerce Digital Growth strategist

NICCE

Achievements:
• Relaunched website delivering 40% YoY growth
• Overhauled marketing mix to deliver 30% more with a 20% reduction on spend

Fractional Head Of Ecommerce

Drake's

Achievements:
• end to end business diagnostic to better understand previous underperformance
• Built out a growth 3-year non-linior growth plan
• Hired in senior eCommerce team

Ecommerce Consultant | Director | CMO | CCO & Founder @ Heur

Co-founder of Heur - an award-winning DTC (direct-to-consumer) as a service ecommerce agency. We run your full DTC strategy, ecommerce store, digital marketing and retention. We become your expert ecommerce team on demand. Running some of the world's best B2Bs ecommerce stores for them.

A passionate and self-motivated hands-on, pure-play Ecommerce and digital marketing expert with 17+ years of advanced end-to-end working knowledge of international luxury and FMCG retail sectors. In-depth working relationships with brands, agencies and investors.

Previously worked for brands such as H&M, Lyle & Scott, Vivobarefoot, Drake's, Resident Home, Derek Rose, Jaded, The Ragged Priest, Duke & Dexter and Tangle Teezer. 

Actively working with clients as a CMO, COO, Director of Growth and Ned. Helping businesses rebuild from the ground up, bolster themselves for onward growth or prepare for an M&A. 

Covering all aspects of ecommerce, from marketplaces and brand development to ownership of the online presence, including full P&L ownership, advanced working knowledge of multichannel digital marketing, and full business growth dynamics. A strong understanding of all aspects of the operational fulfilment of an ecommerce business, from procurement through to design and final delivery. 

With specialist knowledge of driving growth strategies to deliver best-in-class profitable growth. Well-versed in ensuring communication flows seamlessly from stakeholder to owner/founder/board level. With a keen eye for tech and data-driven solutions, I thrive on the fast pace and continual production of new challenges, applying an unparalleled focus to meeting deadlines and driving projects to completion.

Director Of Ecommerce Strategy

End-to-end Ecommerce and marketing growth agency. Delivering managed Ecommerce and fractional growth support for growing brands.

Working with clients such as H&M, Union Coffee, Drakes and Jaded London.

The best part of running an agency?

Hands down... it’s the people.

Not the wins. Not the cool brands. Not even the big campaigns.

It’s getting to talk to and hire some of the smartest, kindest, most grounded people in ecommerce.

Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to work with people who aren’t just good at what they do but they care deeply about the work, the results, and the team around them.

And when we hire, that’s what Heur is looking for.

Yes, we want skill. We want experience. But what really stands out?

- People who take ownership: no excuses, no flapping, just action
- People who are curious: always asking why, not just how
- People who balance brand and performance:and know when to push on either
- People who make others better: not louder, just clearer
- People who are genuinely kind: because that’s the glue that holds fast-moving teams together

You can train almost everything else. But you can’t teach someone to care.

That’s the magic. 

Hiring is hard. Building teams is harder. But when you get it right, you can feel it in the culture, in the pace, in the results.

Very much a reflective moment for me.

Talks about #startups, #ecommerce, #marketing, #operations, and #omnichannel

DTC As A Service | Ecommerce Consultant | Founder @ Heur

Black Friday is great for revenue. But it can be brutal on your brand.

Now that the frenzy’s over, it’s worth asking:

- What did this moment really do for your business?

Because every year, brands push harder, deeper discounts, bigger campaigns, more urgency. 

But here’s the flip side no one likes to talk about:

- Black Friday can make long-term brand building harder.

When promotions go too deep, too often, or too broad, we start to chip away at what makes a brand desirable in the first place.

I’ve seen it firsthand:

- Customers who used to buy on launch day… now wait for the markdown
- Products positioned as premium… now feel negotiable
- “New arrivals” met with questions like “Will this be 30% off next month?”
- And worst of all... internal pressure to beat last year’s revenue, at any cost
It’s not that Black Friday is bad. But when it becomes the only lever to drive growth, we lose control of the story.

So what protects the brand?

- Clarity on what you stand for... and the pricing model that supports it
- Promotions that are limited, meaningful, and consistent with your positioning
- Messaging that builds long-term value, not just short-term demand
- Internal alignment: revenue targets that don’t sacrifice perception

Protecting your brand in a sales-driven environment is hard. But if you don’t, the cost shows up later... in lower margins, reduced loyalty, and slower growth.

We made ecommerce smarter. Did we also make it fragile?

We’ve integrated AI into everything: demand forecasting, product copy, customer service, merchandising, you name it. It’s fast, efficient, powerful.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: if you're fully dependent on AI, and the market flips? You're exposed.

Google’s CEO is already warning of “irrationality” in the AI race. Stocks are wobbling. And funding is outpacing stability.

So ask yourself:

If your AI tool disappears tomorrow, what breaks?

What’s at risk:

- Vendor lock-in – one tool owns too much of your stack
- Cost spikes – compute bills and API limits can punch holes in margin
- Output errors – hallucinated copy, dodgy data, rogue decisions
- Slowdowns – funding dries up, roadmaps vanish
- No humans left – and no manual plan when things go wrong

What you can do now:

- Diversify – don’t put all your eggs in one model
- Keep humans in the loop – especially where it affects CX or ops
- Map your backups – be ready to roll without the tool
- Cut what doesn’t convert – if it’s not adding value, it’s baggage
- Stress-test budgets – can you afford this stack if things tighten?

The smartest brands won’t just build fast. They’ll build safe.

Fast-forward 12 months: the ones that planned for turbulence will be the ones scaling calmly while others panic.

Use the tools. But own the system. That’s how i'd future-proof.

The last role of the year with Heur.

We are looking for a fully remote project manager to join the team.

Check out the roll in the comments below.

Team Heur loved working on PANGAIA with Commerce-UI.

- Brand consolidation online 
- Cleaning up dead tech
- Optimising UI/UX
- And more...

A great way to close out 2025.

Co-founder of Commerce-UI. Crafting eCommerce for design-driven brands.

[NEW 🔥 case study. Sound on 📢]
PANGAIA came for a PDP tweak and left with a new way to design, ship and tell product stories online.

A few highlights that I’m personally proud of:
🟢 Product pages now surface garment details and material insights right away, with clearer size help, stronger galleries and faster access to care content.
🟢 Modular editorial system in Shopify. Over 30 reusable sections the team can mix and match in the theme editor, no tickets needed. The same system powers Pangaia Lab and Pangaia Stories so tech content and campaigns feel like one world.
🟢 Easier product discovery thanks to cleaner filters, quick icon shortcuts, flexible grids and consistent swatches that echo how the clothes are actually built.
🟢 Shared Figma and Shopify language. A live Figma space mirrors the theme structure so the Pangaia team can test layouts, understand constraints and ship faster with less back and forth.

All running on Shopify Online 2.0.
Design and Development by Commerce-UI! 

Loved teaming up on this with Heur (Chris Nawrocki) and it would not happen without amazing support from Kamil Pawlowski 🙌

We packed the full story, screens and details into a fresh case study 
👇 <link in the comment >

Good marketing can’t save a bad product.

We all know it, but it still catches teams out.

You can have clean Meta campaigns, tidy Google accounts, solid Klaviyo flows, a well-traded site… but if customers don’t want the product, nothing moves. Marketing amplifies reality. It doesn’t rewrite it.

Fashion feels this most. Around 70 percent of new products miss because they weren’t validated properly or landed way off-trend. And yes, ecommerce usually gets blamed first.

This is exactly why buyers, merchandisers and planners matter. Their decisions decide whether something converts or gathers dust.

But here’s the upside: poor product performance isn’t failure. It’s feedback. And it’s some of the clearest insight you’ll ever get.

Your signals are right there:

- Repeat return reasons
- On-site searches for things you don’t stock
- High traffic, zero intent
- Reviews that tell the truth no one wanted to hear

Use it. Refine. Re-cut. Re-position. Test small. Learn fast. Then do it again.

A few rules that always work:

- Validate early
- Follow behaviour, not guesses
- Iterate fast
- Don’t try to “spend your way out” of a product issue

The fashion brands that win aren’t running miracle ads. They’re building products people actually want, and letting marketing pour fuel on the fire.

Get the product right, and everything else becomes easier.

And when that happens – the growth isn’t just better it's sustainable.

Sometimes things kind of make sense...

This is very much one of them times!

Paul Rogers was the first person to give me time of day when i wanted to become a consultant many years ago... back when Vervaunt was a 4 desk office in a we work... These little moments of support meant a lot! 

Seeing them grow over the years has been inspirational! A real 101 on how to build community from a genuine love of the industry and its people.

I have a lot of time for them.

So congratulations to Paul Rogers and Josh Duggan and the Vervaunt team on this next chapter!

eCommerce Strategy, Product & Technology | Founder of Vervaunt

We have some pretty big news to share: Vervaunt is joining IDHL, a ~450-person group spanning marketing, eCommerce and technology. 

This move will allows us to achieve some key short-term goals (local office in the US, genuinely invest significantly in AI around media and other areas, double down on a few key product areas) and also be part of something bigger long-term.

It’s worth noting that I’ve known Lewis Sellers, IDHL’s new-ish CEO for over 15 years and he is one of my best friends (also good friends with Josh Duggan, Shamoli Miah and Bethan Rainford). Lewis is one of the sharpest people I’ve ever met, we’ve always wanted to work together and I’m really confident in his mission. Ultimately, when reviewing options (given how fast things are changing), we didn’t want to raise capital on our own (would require aggressive growth and focus on areas that we don’t want to focus on), didn’t want to sell the business fully or join a large company (would mean we lose the feel of Vervaunt and also mark the end for us in a lot of ways) and we ultimately wanted something we could commit to long-term. We feel Lewis’s new direction of travel is a really good fit for us and our goals.

I’ve written quite a long article with some details on the deal, our plans to push Vervaunt over the next few years and my thoughts on the market etc - the link is in the comments. However, the TLDR:

- IDHL acquires Vervaunt to strengthen media and strategy capabilities
Leadership team roll significant equity into the group as part of a long-term strategy
- Co-Founders Paul and Josh join the new look IDHL Leadership team but remain in product-focused roles at Vervaunt
- Vervaunt brand will remain and there’ll be further investment in product and key assets
- IDHL and Vervaunt to invest over £1.5m in AI and R&D to build more IP and introduce product-led offerings
- Vervaunt to open US office in 2026

Too many people to thank - lots in the article! I’m super proud of what our team has achieved / built in the first chapter and I’m really hoping this will help us to improve in lots of areas and ultimately build something bigger and better! 

Viva Vervaunt 💚💚💚!!!

Black Friday has a way of revealing the truth about a product.

Some items fly because they’re genuinely useful. They solve a problem, fit into people’s lives, or bring something meaningful to the table. Others sell because they’re on-trend, buzzy, or riding the momentum of a brand moment.

But once the sale ends and the excitement fades, the real story begins.

The brands that keep growing after peak season are the ones built on substance, not just storytelling. They’re not constantly scrambling for the next trend or campaign. Their products do the heavy lifting, day in and day out.

Here’s where the cracks start to show:

- Products built on brand hype often struggle to earn repeat purchases
- Without real value, retention suffers and acquisition gets more expensive
- The harder you have to work to convince someone to buy, the weaker the product’s pull
- When buzz becomes the plan, growth becomes unstable

What makes a brand resilient is when the product stands on its own. It doesn’t need to be dressed up or pushed. It earns its place by delivering, consistently.

When customers come back because they actually use what you make, that’s where brand equity lives.

So as Black Friday results roll in, this is the real question worth asking:

- Will they still come back when there’s no discount?

Sustainable brands don’t just win during peak.

- They earn a place in people’s routines, and they stay there.

You can run the best ads in the world… but without strategy, you’re just amplifying noise.

Tactics give you little boosts. A tidy week. A nice spike.

But they don’t build anything that lasts.

Real growth comes from the longer game... the brand you’re building, the memory structures you’re reinforcing, the story people recognise instantly.
Binet & Field’s research is clear: long-term brand building drives most of the commercial impact, while short-term activation is exactly that...short-term.

The challenge? Brand work takes time. And budget. Which is why so many ecommerce teams default to “what works right now”.

But the brands that win don’t chase spikes. They compound.

What that actually looks like:

- Every activation reinforces what the brand stands for.
- Performance sits on top of strategy, not instead of it.
- Messaging and visuals stay consistent, even when you’re iterating.
- Distinctive assets are used everywhere, not just in campaigns.
- Brand budget is protected, not “what’s left over”.

Practical steps:

- Define your brand strategy on one page.
- Use the same visual and tone cues across every channel.
- Sense-check every activation: does it build the brand or erode it?
- Keep 10–20% of spending ring-fenced for brand.
- Blend emotional brand work with rational performance.

If your growth feels spiky, it’s not a media issue. It’s a strategy gap.

Tactics move revenue. Brand multiplies it.

We’re seeing more DTC brands test LinkedIn Ads... but is it actually worth it?

Short answer: sometimes (I know sorry) but only with a clear strategy and aligned goals.

LinkedIn’s a professional platform. People log in to work, not shop. So unless your product connects to their career, status, or work identity… you’re fighting uphill.

Yes, the targeting is pretty good: job title, company, seniority...

But the costs? not so good...

Think $30+ CPMs and $3–$6 CPCs. That’s 5–10x more than Meta or TikTok, with lower engagement.

For most DTC brands: skincare, fashion, lifestyle etc LinkedIn won’t give you the scale or ROAS you need.

But it can work if:

- You’re selling high-ticket or professional-adjacent products (travel gear, premium wellness, gifting)
- You’ve got a B2B2C angle or targeting specific roles with intent
- You’re running brand storytelling or thought-leadership, not just performance ads
- You’re retargeting warm leads or CRM-based audiences
- If you want to test it? go narrow. Use career-relevant creative, tight segments, and a capped budget. Measure fast. Pull out if the numbers don’t stack up.

LinkedIn isn’t a growth engine for most ecommerce brands. But for a few, in the right context? 

It can delivery what your looking for... However i think you could also find that elsewhere for a lower cost!

I’ve always seen ecommerce growth as a game of balancing risk.

Not avoiding it. Not blindly pushing through it.

Just managing it well enough to move forward without tripping over your own ambition. When I’m building forecasts, I’m not just asking “what do we think will happen?”

I’m asking:

- What if it doesn’t happen?
- What if it all goes better than expected?
- What if something breaks mid-campaign?

Because that’s the stuff that separates brands that scale from brands that stall.

We do this every time we go into peak or Black Friday, we’ve always got a Plan A, B, sometimes even a C. If offer one flops, we’ve got something in the wings. If stock doesn’t hold, we’ve got a backfill. If a tech tool fails, we know who’s got the manual backup workflow.

It’s not overkill. It’s what keeps you moving when everyone else is firefighting.
Here’s a few ways I approach it:

- Always forecast in 3 layers: base case, worst case, best case. Makes the upside exciting and the downside survivable.
- Pressure test the plan: What breaks if traffic doubles? What if email underperforms? What if your main payment provider drops?
- Pre-build the fallback offers:not during the panic. Have them written, designed, and ready to go.
- Put 10–20% of budget toward calculated bets: test a new audience, try a new channel. But never bet the house on it.
- Build margin into your tech and ops: a bit of capacity, a backup flow, a simple way to pivot if the main path fails.

This is the stuff no one posts about on launch day. But behind every smooth campaign is a stack of “what ifs” that were quietly sorted weeks ago.
If you’re scaling, you don’t need more chaos.

You need more predictable control.

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