Summary
- 1€24M revenue with 6 FTE - on track for €35M in 2026
- 2Fulfillment fully outsourced - focus on what drives growth
- 3Own brands: ETQ Amsterdam en TOV Essentials
- 4AI and automation as force multiplier - not as hype
- 5Everything we learn we apply directly for clients
The problem
What if I told you we run €24 million in revenue with 6 people? No big team. No clunky organization. No 20 meetings per week. Just a lean setup - that works. Most companies grow by hiring more people. More layers. More management. More overhead. And somewhere along the way, focus gets lost. We do it differently. We built and scaled ETQ Amsterdam and TOV Essentials to €24M revenue in 2025. On track for €35M in 2026, based on Q1 run rate. No guarantee - but this is how the numbers look right now. Our strength isn't in more people. Our strength is in focus.
Sound familiar?
This is what we see at almost every brand before we start:
- Your team grows, but revenue per FTE drops
- You have more meetings than output
- Fulfillment and logistics eat up your focus
- You don't know exactly where your money goes
- Growth feels heavy instead of scalable
- You invest more in overhead than in growth
What goes wrong
- Hiring more people as the solution for every problem
- Keeping fulfillment in-house because 'we want to do it ourselves'
- Not building systems - everything manual
- Losing focus through too many tasks per person
- Investing in overhead instead of inventory and growth
- Ignoring AI or using AI without purpose
- Seeing content as output instead of a system
Approach
No loose actions, but a system that delivers structural results.
Organization structure
6 FTE in-house. That's it. Beyond that, we work with a flexible layer of freelancers: photographers, developers, specialists. We work with specialists when we need them - not full-time. Fulfillment? Fully external. Is it always cheaper? No. But it gives us something much more valuable: focus.
- 6 FTE core - everything that directly drives growth
- Flexible layer for photography, development, specialisms
- Fulfillment 100% external - focus on core activities
- Customer service in-house - direct feedback loop to product
Focus on three pillars
Everything we do falls into three categories. Product: quality, expanding assortment, products people come back for. Customer: in-house customer service, direct feedback loop, customer experience. Growth: content, website, campaigns, scalability. Everything that directly contributes to growth - we keep in-house.
- Product: quality, assortment, repeat purchases
- Customer: service in-house, feedback loop, experience
- Growth: content, website, campaigns, scalability
- Everything without direct impact gets outsourced
Systems and AI as leverage
We don't save to pocket profit. We save to grow harder. Freed-up resources go to inventory, new collections, product development, ad spend. Lean doesn't mean investing less. It means investing smarter. We use tools like Shopify, Klaviyo, Judge.me and Channable - but that's not our core. They're means, not strategy. We use AI for customer service, content processing, product descriptions, translations, automation. No AI for AI's sake. Only AI that actually saves time or improves quality.
- Tools like Shopify, Klaviyo, Judge.me and Channable
- AI for customer service, content, translations
- Sorting tools for bestsellers and inventory management
- Content engine: many shoots, many packshots, systems to process
Result
This isn't theory. This is how we operate daily - and the results speak for themselves.
Revenue in 2025 with 6 FTE
Run rate towards 2026
FTE in-house - the rest is flexible
Own brands - ETQ Amsterdam, TOV Essentials
What this means for you
Many companies are stuck in the same pattern. Too many people. Too many layers. Too much inefficiency. The result: high costs, less speed, less profit. More people doesn't automatically mean more growth. This doesn't mean it works for everyone. But if you want to scale, you need to look critically at where your time and money goes.
- Your team grows but your margin drops
- Fulfillment costs more time than marketing
- You have no systems - everything is manual
- You invest in overhead instead of growth
- You want to scale but it keeps feeling heavier
- You want a partner that does it themselves - not just advises
Who we are
We build brands ourselves. And use that knowledge to scale others.
This isn't theory. This is execution experience. We run multiple brands ourselves - and apply the exact same systems for our clients.
We build and scale our own brands
Results across industries - from fashion to real estate
We deploy the same systems for clients
Small team, big impact - no overhead
Want to build this for your brand too?
No standard process. We work with a select number of companies – and build scalable growth together.
You speak directly with our team – no sales layer in between.
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