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Brand Operating System™  ·  DTC $5M – $50M

Your marketing isn't the problem. Your system is.

We diagnose every force in your brand marketing system, find the constraint, and fix the right thing first. Not the loudest problem — the right one.

Created by the founder behind two private-equity footwear exits.
Run the Brand Diagnostic → Work With Ratio9
Most brands are fixing the wrong thing ◆ The constraint is always upstream ◆ Fix it once, compound forever ◆ Brand weakness has a daily price ◆ The system always has a primary lever ◆ Diagnosis before prescription ◆ Every channel is priced by brand strength ◆ You can't outspend a weak foundation ◆
The Problem

Most DTC brands are optimising the wrong thing.

01 / 03
ROAS is a symptom metric

The brands spending least per acquired customer have the strongest brand layer underneath — not the best media buyers. You can't outspend a weak foundation. You can only mask it temporarily.

02 / 03
Your PDP is losing what your ads earn

The average DTC brand sends paid traffic to a product page missing schema, BNPL, returns policy, and with generic CTA copy. Every channel above the conversion layer is paying the price for what happens below it.

03 / 03
Channel performance is brand performance

Every dollar spent on acquisition is priced by brand strength. A weak brand pays a premium on every channel, every time. Ratio9 measures that penalty — and quantifies what fixing it is worth.

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The Brand Operating System™

Nine forces.
Three layers.
One number.

Layer 01
Foundation
The value of every marketing dollar starts here. Weakness compounds upward.
01
Brand Identity
Positioning, territory, story, and the consistency that builds equity over time.
02
Content System
Infrastructure that produces on-brand content at the pace the market demands.
03
Audience Intelligence
How precisely you understand who you're building for — and who you're not.
Layer 02
Amplification
How your brand reaches, earns, and holds attention across channels.
04
Paid Acquisition
Channel efficiency, creative systems, and CAC trajectory against brand strength.
05
Organic Reach
SEO, social, and earned media — traffic that doesn't reset when spend stops.
06
Ecommerce
The conversion layer. Where every upstream dollar is either captured or lost.
Layer 03
Conversion
Where one-time buyers become the compounding asset that funds the next cycle.
07
Retention & CRM
The systems that turn first purchases into lifetime value.
08
Partnerships
Collaborations and distribution that expand relevance without diluting it.
09
Data & Analytics
The feedback loop that tells you what's working before your P&L does.
System Output
BDVI™ Score  ·  Brand Tax Rate™
BDVI™ YOUR SCORE BRAND IDENTITY · CONTENT · AUDIENCE PAID ACQUISITION · ORGANIC · ECOMMERCE RETENTION · PARTNERSHIPS · DATA FOUNDATION AMPLIFICATION CONVERSION BRAND MOMENTUM LOOP ↺ CONVERSION LOOP ↩ Revenue → Foundation AI DISCOVERY LOOP ↑ Brand Momentum Conversion Loop (Revenue → Foundation) AI Discovery Loop

Foundation compounds into Capture. Revenue returns to Foundation.
Each cycle costs less than the last.

Proprietary Metric
Brand Demand
Velocity Index™

A single composite score — 0 to 100 — measuring the combined strength of all nine pillars. It tells you how fast your marketing system is capable of compounding. Most brands score 35–55 at first assessment. The score matters less than knowing which pillar is the primary constraint — because that's what's pricing every dollar you spend.

BDVI™  =  Σ ( Pillar Score × Layer Weight ) / System Friction
Proprietary Metric
Brand Tax
Rate™

Every dollar spent on acquisition is priced by how strong your brand is. A weak brand pays a premium on every channel — higher CPMs, lower CTRs, worse conversion rates. The Brand Tax Rate™ measures that penalty as a percentage of marketing spend, and quantifies the ROI of fixing the Foundation layer first. This is the number most brands have never seen but are paying daily.

Brand Tax Rate™  =  ( Actual CAC − Benchmark CAC ) / Benchmark CAC
Free Tools

Start with the
diagnosis.

01
Free  ·  Self-assessed  ·  10–15 min
Brand Diagnostic™

Score all nine pillars of your brand marketing system. The assessment produces your BDVI™, a system diagnosis, spider chart, Brand Tax Rate™, and a 90-day action plan — the same output used in Ratio9 client engagements.

9 Pillars3 Growth LoopsBDVI Score Brand Tax Rate™Spider ChartAction Plan
Self-assessed  ·  BDVI output Take the Diagnostic →
02
Free  ·  Automated  ·  30 seconds
PDP Scanner™

Paste any product page URL. We scan it automatically from the HTML up — no questionnaire, no guesswork. You get a scored audit showing exactly what's broken and what it's costing you.

SchemaStructured DataReview Visibility Trust SignalsBNPLCTA Copy Returns PolicyMobileSEO
24 signals  ·  scored 0 – 100 Run the Scanner →
The Ratio9 Method

Diagnose.
Prioritise.
Build.

01
System Diagnosis

We measure all nine pillars of your brand marketing system using the BDVI™ framework. This reveals where you're strong, where you're leaking, and — critically — the order in which gaps compound each other. You can't find this by looking at one channel or one metric.

02
Constraint Identification

The system always has a primary constraint. Fixing the wrong thing first — the most visible problem rather than the root cause — is how brands stay stuck for years. We find the actual lever. Not the loudest one. The one where fixing it unlocks everything downstream.

03
Prioritised Build

A sequenced roadmap: what to fix in 30 days, what to build in 90, what to scale in 12 months. Every recommendation comes with the business case — so you can defend every dollar to your board or investors, not just execute on instinct.

David Giordano
David Giordano
Founder, Ratio9™  ·  CMO, Floafers
LinkedIn ↗ hello@ratio9.co →
Ratio9 came from a pattern I kept seeing — brands that couldn't grow despite great product, real marketing spend, and genuine creative talent.

The constraint was never what they thought it was. It wasn't the media buyer, the creative director, or the product. It was the system — a misalignment between brand identity, content, acquisition, and conversion that no single channel or agency could see, because none of them owned the whole picture.

I've spent more than two decades building consumer brands at the intersection of fashion, footwear, and direct-to-consumer commerce. I co-founded Pour La Victoire and Kelsi Dagger, scaling both from concept to global distribution before their acquisitions by private equity. I've held brand leadership roles at Theory, BCBG, and Sam Edelman. Today I serve as CMO at Floafers, where I lead brand strategy and DTC growth.

The brands that compound are not the most creative. They are the most systematic. Ratio9 is the diagnostic infrastructure I built to give other founders and operators the same view — the framework, the tools, and the sequence. Because fixing the right thing first is what separates brands that scale from brands that spend.

Pour La Victoire
Co-Founder
PE Exit
Kelsi Dagger
Co-Founder
PE Exit
Theory
Brand Leadership
Sam Edelman
Brand Leadership
BCBG
Brand Leadership
Floafers
Chief Marketing Officer
The Ratio9 Brief

Actionable frameworks.
No noise.

One issue per week. Each one gives you something you can use immediately — a framework, a fix, a diagnostic. Not a narrative about what's happening in DTC. What to do about it.

Work Together

Ready for the full picture?

The free tools find the signal. The full Ratio9 engagement delivers the strategy, the roadmap, and the accountability to execute it.

Full PDP Audit
59 criteria, expert copy review, visual analysis, and a prioritised fix sequence with the business case for each.
Brand Sprint
Full BDVI™ diagnostic plus a 90-day system roadmap. Delivered in two weeks. Board-ready output.
Ongoing Partnership
Fractional Brand Operating System™ for brands ready to compound. Strategy, systems, and execution accountability.

Response within 24 hours  ·  hello@ratio9.co