There is a specific moment in the commercial lifecycle of an ecommerce business where more activity stops producing more results and starts producing more noise. Recognising that moment before it becomes expensive is the thing that separates well-run commercial systems from busy ones.
It feels like a scaling problem. The team is larger than it was. The spend is higher. The channel mix is broader. The reporting is more sophisticated. And the revenue per unit of marketing investment is quietly declining. Not sharply enough to trigger a restructure. Gradually enough to generate explanations.
That is not a scaling problem. It is a signal that the commercial architecture has not kept pace with the commercial ambition. The system that produced growth at £20m is being asked to produce growth at £80m without structural revision. It is like running the same engine at twice the load without servicing it. The degradation is real and it compounds before it becomes visible.
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