EF Pricing v0.5 — Ryan's Financial Story

Filed: 2026-05-25 by Mycelia Status: ✅ Structure locked per Billy 2026-05-25 Supersedes: EF_PRICING_v0.4_LOCKED.md (kept for history — superseded by the reframe to Ryan's POV + declining fees + increasing revenue share + infrastructure ownership) For: Ryan Fry — the proposal he sees. Framed entirely from his financial perspective: what he spends, what he earns, what he keeps.

The frame

"I always expect to see a clear return on money spent." — Ryan Fry, paraphrased via Billy

That's the discipline this entire engagement honors. Everything below is mapped from your view: your current state, your growth opportunity, your spend, your return, your bounded downside.

We are setting up a self-driving car. You own the car. You own the road (your customer relationships, your brand, your supply chain). You own the fuel (your media spend, your accounts). We build it, calibrate it, teach it your brand, ride alongside as it learns — and step back as the year goes on. By Year 2 it's your car, running on your infrastructure, doing the work.

Where Emerson Fry is now

The gap is meaningful + addressable. You're an established brand with deep customer loyalty, operating without the marketing infrastructure your peers use to compound that loyalty into growth.

What growth looks like — three realistic scenarios

Industry benchmarks for fashion DTC adding a real marketing function from a baseline like yours: 10-20% lift in the first 60 days; 30-50% sustained lift in months 6-12 is the well-documented range for similar brands.

For Emerson Fry specifically, given the gap-to-peer + the asset depth, here are three honest scenarios for Year 1:

Aggressive isn't a fantasy — it's what happens when a strong brand with no marketing function suddenly has one, in a category (slow fashion) where the marketing-system pattern is already proven.

Your financial story across the three scenarios

This is the part that matters. What you spend, what you earn, what you keep — at each lift level. EF's fashion-DTC gross margin is industry-standard ~55% (mid of the 50-60% range; adjust if yours runs different).

Conservative scenario (+15%, $300K new revenue)

flowchart LR
    A["Year 1 spend<br/>$78,500"] --> B["Year 1 spend<br/>breakdown"]
    B --> C1["Tapt setup<br/>$10K"]
    B --> C2["Tapt monthly<br/>(declining)<br/>$43.5K"]
    B --> C3["Tapt success fee<br/>(5% of $300K lift)<br/>$15K"]
    B --> C4["Media spend<br/>(your accounts)<br/>$10K"]
    D["+$300K new revenue<br/>× 55% gross margin"] --> E["$165K gross profit"]
    E --> F["Minus $78.5K spend<br/>= $86.5K net to you"]

Even at the conservative scenario, you net ~$87K Year 1. The engagement pays for itself many times over.

Moderate scenario (+25%, $500K new revenue)

At this scenario you've nearly doubled the engagement's cost in net profit, AND you have a marketing function for Year 2+ that costs less to run.

Aggressive scenario (+50%, $1M new revenue)

At aggressive growth, your spend is $243K — much higher than your $100K exploratory budget. BUT: that spend is paid for by $1M of new revenue, with $306K of net profit left over after everything.

The principle: every dollar you spend above your budget is paid for by the growth that triggered it, many times over. Spend tracks success.

Your "exploratory budget" — how it fits

Your $100K exploratory budget is the conservative-scenario shape:

That leaves $21,500 of headroom inside your $100K — for media expansion if early results warrant, or for any additional infrastructure costs (next section).

If you exceed $100K in Year 1, it will be because lift triggered higher success fees + you chose to scale media spend in response. That over-budget piece is paid by the lift itself.

How the spend flows — clear separation

This matters: there are FOUR distinct cost categories, and we're transparent about each. No bundling, no markup, no hidden lines.

flowchart TB
    Y["YOUR YEAR 1<br/>(EF's total spend)"]
    Y --> T["📦 TAPT FEES<br/>(setup + declining monthly<br/>+ success share)"]
    Y --> I["☁️ INFRASTRUCTURE<br/>(your Google Cloud<br/>your API accounts<br/>~$50-150/month)"]
    Y --> M["📈 MEDIA SPEND<br/>(your ad accounts<br/>$10-35K/year typical)"]
    Y --> X["🛠️ EXISTING TOOLS<br/>(Klaviyo, Shopify, etc.<br/>you already pay for these)"]
    T -.->|"the work we do"| Z["TAPT EARNS"]
    I -.->|"directly billed to you<br/>we don't touch this"| ZZ["GOOGLE / ANTHROPIC EARN"]
    M -.->|"flows through your accounts<br/>we don't touch this"| ZZZ["META / PINTEREST / GOOGLE EARN"]
    X -.->|"your existing relationships"| ZZZZ["KLAVIYO / SHOPIFY / ETC. EARN"]

1. Tapt fees (what we earn)

The only money that comes to us. Setup + declining monthly + success share. Detailed below.

2. Infrastructure costs (your Google Cloud + API accounts)

Remy runs on YOUR Google Cloud account, not ours. This is the actual self-driving-car part. Your infrastructure, your bill, no markup.

We help you set this up as part of the $10K setup work — provisioning the GCP project, configuring the APIs, transferring the platform to your environment. But the credentials, the billing, and the ownership stay with you. You can fire us tomorrow and the system keeps running on your infrastructure.

This is true SaaS-removal. Not "we replaced your SaaS subscription with our SaaS subscription." We replaced it with infrastructure you own.

3. Media spend (your ad accounts)

The actual money to Meta, Pinterest, Google to run paid campaigns. Flows through your ad accounts at platform cost. No Tapt markup, no resale, no commission. We do the work to make every dollar effective (creative production, audience targeting, attribution, optimization) — but the dollars themselves go from your bank to the platforms direct.

4. Existing tools (you already pay for these)

Klaviyo, Shopify, your existing tools. Same as today. We integrate with them — we don't add to them.

Tapt fees in detail — declining monthly + increasing upside

The structure mirrors the work: heavy hand-holding at setup, lighter as the system learns, but bigger shared upside as growth compounds.

The $10,000 setup fee

One-time, on signing. What it covers:

Monthly fees — declining schedule

Heavy work upfront; less as Remy learns your roads.

Year 2 monthly settles at ~$2,500 – $3,500/mo for ongoing stewardship + system management. The fees keep going down as the system gets smarter — not up.

Revenue share — increasing tiers, capped at 20% top marginal

You only pay this if revenue actually grew. The harder the system delivers, the more we earn — but the structure guarantees you always keep ≥80¢ of every marginal dollar of growth, no matter how big the scenario.

No dollar cap. The 20% top marginal rate IS the cap. We never take more than 20¢ of any dollar of growth. You always keep 80¢+.

Why this aligned shape is right for Ryan's discipline

You said: "I always expect to see a clear return on money spent." This structure:

1. Front-loads our compensation in the months we work hardest (setup + first 90 days)
2. Reduces our monthly take as the system gets smarter — you stop paying for hand-holding you don't need
3. Scales our upside if (and only if) the system delivers growth — turning the spend into a profit-share, not a cost line
4. Never crosses 20% of any growth dollar — you always come out ahead, at every scenario

The math from your view at every scenario: net positive, scaling with our success at delivering yours.

What you keep — the bounded view

Every scenario, every spend level, your return:

The bounded downside: if we deliver no measurable lift in 12 months — you've spent $63.5K (Tapt setup + monthly + minimal media + minor infrastructure). You still have:

• The platform on your own infrastructure (yours to keep + run + modify)
• The brand DNA productized into a working system
• The first-round creative suite (yours)
• The website page additions (live + driving SEO + brand equity)
• 12 months of clean Klaviyo + Pinterest + Meta + Google data + attribution baseline
• A marketing function that exists for Year 2+ to run cheaper from

That's a real "worst case" — not "your money is gone." It's "you spent $63.5K on building marketing infrastructure that's yours."

Year 2+ — the car drives itself

By Year 2 the major work is done. The system has 12 months of EF-specific learning. The integrations are mature. The team curates from a producing system.

Year 2 floor cost to you: ~$33K (if no success share triggered) — basically marketing-system maintenance + media. Year 2 ceiling cost: scales with growth, but always you-keep-80%-of-marginal-dollar bounded.

The relationship gets cheaper to run + more valuable as it ages. That's the whole point.

How to walk Ryan through this

Suggested narrative arc for the call:

1. Open with his discipline: "You said you always want to see a clear return. Here's how this is built."
2. Show his current state: $2M baseline, real brand assets, gap in marketing function.
3. Show the lift scenarios + the math at each: conservative, moderate, aggressive. Every scenario nets him positive.
4. Explain the four-bucket separation: Tapt fees / infrastructure (his) / media (his) / existing tools (his). We only earn on the Tapt fees + the success share.
5. Walk the declining monthly schedule: heaviest work first; lighter as system learns. Our incentive is to make ourselves less needed over time.
6. Walk the increasing success share: aligned. We earn more if he grows more. He keeps ≥80¢ of every marginal dollar.
7. Land on Year 2: the car drives itself; engagement gets cheaper + more valuable.
8. Close on bounded downside: if no lift, he spent $63.5K and has a working marketing infrastructure he owns forever.

— Mycelia, 2026-05-25 (Ryan's-POV rewrite per Billy)