Case study
How we built PrettyLitter's subscription engine to $40M ARR
- Role
- Head of Growth, employee #1
- Category
- Subscription commerce, pet wellness
- Results
- $100K MRR to $40M ARR in under two years, under 2-month payback, about 4x LTV:CAC
- Outcome
- Acquired by Mars Petcare for about $1.4B
The situation
PrettyLitter had a genuinely new product: a cat litter that changes color to flag possible health issues. When I joined, about a year after launch, the business was at $100K MRR, almost entirely one-time purchases. A performance agency ran paid media as a black box.
The agency wasn't the real problem. The model was. Transactional revenue in a commoditized category is a treadmill: you pay to acquire every order, again and again.
What I did
- 01
Made the subscription call. I chose to build a subscription business on purpose, even if it slowed top-line growth in the short term.
- 02
Took acquisition back in-house. I pulled strategy out of the black box so every dollar of spend was judged on subscriber economics, not platform ROAS.
- 03
Rebuilt the funnel around subscription conversion. Offers, landing pages, and checkout were redesigned to make subscribing the default path.
- 04
Built the retention layer. Lifecycle, loyalty, and reactivation programs made the unit economics work at scale.
- 05
Turned down easy revenue. I passed on one-time sales that would have inflated the top line but diluted subscriber quality.
Results
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| ARR | $100K MRR to $40M ARR in under two years |
| CAC payback | Under 2 months |
| LTV:CAC | About 4x |
| Exit | Acquired by Mars Petcare for about $1.4B |
What this means for your brand
If your revenue is mostly first orders, your growth ceiling is set by your CAC. The fix is rarely a better agency. It is a business model and a funnel built around the customers who stay.