A £25M home fragrance brand spending up to £25,000 a day on ads, whose dashboards and bank account were telling two different stories. This is what closing that gap looked like.
Valentte had grown 50× in five years, making it one of the UK’s fastest‑growing home fragrance brands. Paid ads were the engine.
Luke Bream, Valentte’s CEO, wasn’t flying blind. He understood contribution profit and wanted his ad model to run like a machine: intentional inputs and a clear view of when each day of spend paid back.
“We could see from a cash perspective that there were problems with profitability, but inside the metrics we were looking at, it didn’t look like they were.
The frustration was the mismatch between those two things.”
He’d studied what the best brands do and rebuilt the reporting more than once. The mismatch stayed.
“It’s like standing on quicksand… the data had to be rock solid in order to make the right decisions, and I hadn’t got that right.”
Luke asked Clove to run the Ad Profitability Audit: to rebuild their advertising model from scratch and answer three questions on Valentte’s true numbers:
In 10 business days, we pulled every order, product cost, variable fulfillment cost, and every pound of ad spend into one contribution‑level profit model.
“You gave us targets now for acquisition costs that we shouldn’t go above.”
When the new model came back, it didn’t match their spreadsheets. At all.
“It feels a little bit like a magic trick. There you are.
Oh my god, that’s what the real numbers are.”
We walked through the math live, line by line, and reran the numbers together.
“Wherever you put the LTV number, it’s out by half…
Christ Almighty.”
The hard truth: the ad machine Luke thought was running smoothly was quietly losing serious money.
Valentte’s team acted immediately on the new CAC guardrail. Three days later, cohorts that had been losing £1,600 a day were making £1,400 a day.
Before the Audit
Three days after
Net swing
“Translate that over a year… £1.1 million difference it will make to our bottom line, just that single change.”
The month following their Audit was the most profitable in Valentte’s 15‑year history.
And they’re on track for an additional £1.1 million in profit over the next 12 months.
See if an Audit makes sense for you
With one CAC guardrail and a profit model he trusts, Luke now treats every day of ad spend as capital at work instead of chips on a table.
“There’s a huge sense of relief because I can see the right approach going forward.”
“I will not approach marketing or advertising in the same way ever again.”
Valentte now works with Clove on an ongoing basis, using their new advertising model as the source of truth for customer acquisition profitability.
“There is still another £2,000 to £3,000 a day of improvement if we get to the target that you set us.”
The same model that fixed the leak is guiding the next phase of profitable growth.
Valentte’s leak wasn’t unusual. It’s what happens when platforms and cash are measured separately. The same pattern might be hiding in your numbers if:
Luke has offered to take reference calls from founders considering Clove. If hearing it directly would help, ask for an introduction at hello@cloveanalytics.com. It comes straight to me, Ademide, Clove’s founder.
Please only request this if you’re seriously considering an Audit so we respect Luke’s time.
“Do it — 100%, a thousand percent… you will not regret it.”
Prefer it unedited? Watch the complete 10‑minute interview with Luke, trimmed only for pauses.
