You make a better product. Shoppers just can’t find it yet.
Discovery Marketing finds the reason your customers love what you make, turns it into ads and landing pages that sell, and puts them in front of shoppers who are ready to buy, while your store and your checkout stay yours.
A 30-minute call with Andy. You get your own rate, agreed before we start, and it goes down as your spend grows.
KasiaFounder, Plover Pack Co. · Avondale, ChicagoA composite character. Her story shows exactly how we work.
She sewed the first one on her grandmother’s machine.
Her grandmother sewed winter coats for half of Avondale. Kasia biked to work downtown every winter, and every bag she bought soaked through by February. So she bought a few yards of waxed canvas and sewed her own on her grandmother’s old machine.
Coworkers asked for one. Then strangers on the Blue Line. She started selling online and packed every order in her garage after her day job, until a small sewing shop on the Northwest Side took over production and she quit to run Plover Pack Co.
She knows how to make a great bag. Selling it is a different job.
Avondale, 2019. Packing orders after her day job.
The reviews say “best bag I’ve ever owned.” Sales stopped growing.
Her bag outlasts anything at the mall. Outside her first few thousand customers, almost nobody knows it.
Ad account Cost per order up again this week.
Inventory Olive 24L: 31 left.
Returns 4 exchange requests waiting.
Email app Your free trial ends Friday.
Marketplace alert A new listing is using your photos.
Every week, another app.
Ads, inventory, returns, email and customer questions each come with a dashboard and a bill. U.S. online sales grew 12.2% in a year, nearly twice as fast as retail overall. Hers didn’t. The hours went to the dashboards.
U.S. Census Bureau Quarterly E-Commerce Report, 2026
Best waterproof backpack for biking to work in winter?
Here are some popular options:
Big outdoor brand
Marketplace bestseller
Review site pick
Plover Pack Co.: not mentioned
The big names are everywhere.
The megastore delivers tomorrow. Big outdoor brands buy every billboard. Copycat shops sell lookalikes with her photos for half the price. When shoppers ask Google or an AI assistant, those are the names they hear.
Word of mouth has a ceiling.
Bike-club friends tell friends. Happy customers post photos. It grows, slowly, and stops at the edge of the people who already own one.
Busy, but not growing.
Meta’s average price per ad rose 12% in a year. Her prices didn’t move, so the same ad budget bought fewer orders every month.
Meta second-quarter 2026 results
She knows how to make a bag. She doesn’t know how shoppers choose one. So she keeps selling to whoever finds her.
Being better isn’t the same as being found.
Shoppers search, compare, read the reviews and check the shipping. A store that doesn’t show up, doesn’t explain why it’s better, or surprises them at checkout loses the sale before the cart.
best waterproof commuter backpackChicago, IL
1Marketplace megastore
2Review site list
3Big outdoor brand
69% of U.S. online adults use Google to search for products they want to buy.Forrester Consumer Pulse Survey, 2025
4Copycat shop
5Outlet chain
9Plover Pack Co.4.9 stars · 412 reviews
Illustration. Competitor names are hidden on purpose.
693% more holiday traffic reached U.S. retail sites from generative AI tools in 2025 than a year earlier. Adobe Analytics holiday shopping data, 2026
91% of online shoppers read reviews always or regularly. PowerReviews consumer survey (vendor), 2023
40% of U.S. shoppers who abandoned a checkout blamed extra costs like shipping, tax and fees. Baymard Institute, 2025
Meanwhile, online sales reached 17.1% of all U.S. retail in the second quarter of 2026 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2026), and they keep growing. The shoppers are out there, comparing. We’ll never promise a ranking or a return on ad spend; nobody can guarantee either.
Then Kasia met Andy.
Another founder at a Chicago makers’ market sent her a podcast episode with Andy about launching a product. She booked a call, half expecting another agency pitch.
Andy BedellFounder, Discovery Marketing
In 2015 Andy joined KeySmart, the online brand behind a compact key organizer. Within a week, daily sales went from about $5,000 to $25,000. He helped the company reach a peak near $35 million a year, with launches that brought in several million dollars in a month.
That’s the job Kasia needed done: find the real reason people buy, show it in the first few seconds of a video, and scale only what makes money. Creative matters, but profit decides what scales.
Career stats
Where
What happened
UChicago BoothExecutive Education · 4 years
Managed budgets above $20 million a year across Google, LinkedIn and direct mail.
KeySmartJoined 2015
Took daily sales from about $5,000 to $25,000 within a week, then helped the company reach a peak near $35 million a year.
E-commerce
Facebook video ads since 2015. Guest on Shopify Masters, eCommerce Fuel and the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, with early access to ChatGPT ads.
Career
$200 million+ in managed ad spend.
One short call. A landing page that sells, two hours later.
Andy asked what customers say when they open the box, what they compare it to, and why anyone sends one back. Two hours later she had a link to a test landing page for her best seller: why it’s better in one line, real reviews, sizes and colors, honest shipping times, and a button straight into her own checkout.
Before A product page with twelve photos, a size chart and a paragraph about waxed canvas.
2:00:00to your demo
ploverpack.example
The backpack that stays dry through a Chicago winter.Sewn in ChicagoPick your size
Commuter PackWeekenderEveryday ToteFree repairs
Will it keep my laptop dry?
Will a 16-inch laptop fit?
How fast does it ship?
Pick your size
18L24L30L
Order confirmed. Your tracking number is on its way.
Fictional brand. Your test page typically arrives about two hours after your call.
Before we write a word, we read what customers already say.
Every claim on the new page came from somewhere real:
Her reviews. All 412, sorted by what customers praise and what almost stopped them from buying.
Her numbers. Best sellers, return reasons, repeat orders and what each new customer costs to win.
Her competitors. What the big brands and the copycats promise, and what their one-star reviews complain about.
Her call. Thirty minutes on how the bag is made and why she made it.
Biked home in a downpour. Laptop bone dry.
Dry
Four winters in and it still looks new. Better, actually.
Tough
There’s a pocket for everything, and I can finally find my keys.
Organized
Snow, slush, salt. Nothing gets through.
Dry
A strap tore after three years. They fixed it for free.
Tough
Fits a 16-inch laptop, lunch and a change of clothes.
Organized
Biked home in a downpour. Laptop bone dry.
Dry
Four winters in and it still looks new. Better, actually.
Tough
There’s a pocket for everything, and I can finally find my keys.
Organized
Snow, slush, salt. Nothing gets through.
Dry
A strap tore after three years. They fixed it for free.
Tough
Fits a 16-inch laptop, lunch and a change of clothes.
Organized
Composite excerpts written for this illustration, not real reviews.
Three things kept coming up.
Dry
Customers bike through Chicago rain and snow, and what’s inside stays dry. That’s the reason most of them bought.
Tough
Bags that last for years, and a free repair when a strap finally gives. That’s what they tell their friends about.
Organized
A laptop sleeve, a key clip and a pocket for everything. Commuters notice it every single morning.
Now run the plays.
A landing page that shows why the bag is better in a few seconds. Then campaigns that reach shoppers who are already comparing, and follow-up for the ones who almost bought.
Every page makes the same three promises.
A bike commuter and a weekend traveler want different things. Each page shows what dry, tough and organized mean for that shopper, in the words customers already use.
DryYour laptop stays dry through sleet in the bike lane.
ToughWaxed canvas and reinforced straps, with a free repair if one ever gives.
OrganizedA padded sleeve, a key clip and a bottle pocket you can reach on the go.
DryA downpour on the walk to the train? Your clothes stay dry.
ToughBuilt to get tossed in trunks and overhead bins for years.
OrganizedOpens wide, with a separate pocket for shoes.
DryWaxed canvas shrugs off coffee, slush and spring rain.
ToughHandles stitched to carry groceries, not just a notebook.
OrganizedA zip pocket inside, so your phone isn’t lost at the bottom.
Shoppers can ask an AI and land on the right bag.
About one in five U.S. online adults said they’d used ChatGPT in the past month to look for products to buy (Forrester, 2025). Her product pages are built so AI assistants can read sizes, colors, stock and shipping times, then send a shopper straight to the right bag in her own store, ready for her own checkout.
AI assistantExample conversation
I bike to work in Chicago all winter. I need a backpack that fits a 16-inch laptop and won’t soak through.
Look for waxed or coated fabric, a roll-top and a padded sleeve. Plover Pack Co., a small Chicago brand, makes one that reviewers say stays dry in snow and slush.
The Commuter Pack 24L fits a 16-inch laptop and is in stock in olive. Want me to open it on their site?Plover Pack Co.Commuter Pack · 24L · Olive4.9 · Ships from Chicago
Yes, open it.
Done. Here’s the 24L in olive on Plover’s own site, ready to check out.
Meet shoppers at the search.
Someone typing “waterproof backpack for biking” is shopping this week. Google search and Shopping ads can put her bag at the top of those searches, with an ad that answers the search and a page built for it. Pick a search:
Commuters
Gifts & travel
1 · They search
waterproof backpack for biking
Sponsored · ploverpack.exampleBike Backpacks Built for Rain | Sewn in Chicago
Waxed canvas, a roll-top and a padded laptop sleeve. Free repairs if a strap ever gives.
2 · They land on the matching page
Plover Pack Co.Rain, slush, salt. Your laptop stays dry.Pick your size
3 · They convert
Order placedIn her own checkout
Shopping and gift search clicks averaged about $4.14 in 2026 industry benchmarks (LocaliQ/WordStream); your market will vary. Ad position depends on bids, ad quality and competition.
First on a new shelf.
ChatGPT started showing ads in 2026, and Andy got access early. OpenAI is now rolling out ads built straight from a store’s product catalog. So when someone asks for a backpack that survives a Chicago winter, Plover’s clearly labeled sponsored listing can appear below the answer.
ChatGPT labels ads as sponsored and keeps them separate from its answers. We never promise a placement or a mention.
AI assistantIllustration
What’s a good backpack for biking to work in a Chicago winter?
SponsoredPlover Pack Co. · Commuter PackWaxed canvas roll-top, sewn in Chicago. Fits a 16-inch laptop. Free repairs if a strap ever gives.
Ask everyone. Reply like a pro.
Every customer gets the same review request after delivery, whatever we think they’ll say. No rewards for five stars and no burying the bad ones; the FTC’s 2024 rule on reviews bans both. Every reply is calm, public and specific.
FTC Rule on Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 2024
Love the bag, but it took nine days to arrive.
Reply from the owner
You’re right, nine days is too long. A carrier delay held your order, and we should have emailed you the moment it happened. We do now. Thank you for sticking with us.
Illustration of a calm, professional reply.
Most shoppers don’t buy on the first visit. Follow up.
About seven in ten online carts are abandoned. So the people who looked but didn’t buy see the bag again: a short video, a review, a reminder. Emails and texts go only to people who signed up for them, and every one has an easy way out.
Five days. Five places.
MondayGoogle
Searches “waterproof backpack for biking.” Reads the page. Leaves without buying.
TuesdayInstagram
Sees a 15-second video: a garden hose, a roll-top, a dry laptop.
WednesdayEmail
Signed up for the size guide, so she gets one email: the three questions buyers ask most.
ThursdayText message
Opted in to restock alerts. Gets one text: “The olive 24L is back.”
FridayPlover’s site
Orders the 24L in olive, in Plover’s own checkout.
Online cart abandonment averages about 70% across 50 studies. Emails follow CAN-SPAM with a working unsubscribe, and marketing texts go only to people who agreed to get them, as the TCPA requires.Baymard Institute, 2025; CAN-SPAM Act; Telephone Consumer Protection Act
Then the orders started climbing.
Daily sales, before$1,200
Daily sales, after$4,800
Illustrative figures from Kasia’s composite story. Not a typical or guaranteed result. Your numbers depend on your product, margins, market and how much stock you have.
One page that explained the bag in five seconds. Ads aimed at shoppers already comparing. Follow-up for the ones who almost bought. And for the first time, she could see which ads and pages paid for themselves.
Then we made the videos shoppers actually watch.
No stock footage, no actors pretending to be customers. Just Kasia and the bag: a garden-hose test, a side-by-side with a cheap lookalike, and the small team that sews and ships every order. When creators make videos for her, they say they’re paid.
ProofFive minutes under the hose. Is the laptop dry?Side by sideOur stitching vs. a lookalike’sWarmthMeet the people who sew and ship your bag
Concept frames from Kasia’s composite story.
From a garage to a second warehouse.
Year 1 A garage full of boxes.
Orders come from friends and good reviews. Nights go to packing, customer emails and the ad account.
Year 2 A packer, and systems that run themselves.
Landing pages, follow-up emails and a clean handoff into her store and shipping app. She hires her first teammate to pack orders.
Year 3 A customer-care lead and a real warehouse.
Orders outgrow the garage. She moves into a small warehouse in Avondale and hires help instead of answering emails at midnight.
Year 5 A second warehouse and new colors every season.
Organized, profitable and growing. Her mom and her grandmother still stop by to check the stitching.
The kid who learned to sew on her grandmother’s machine now runs a growing brand, on her terms.
Her one regret: she wishes she’d started testing sooner.
Got an idea? We test it before we bet on it.
Kasia wanted the product page to show a delivery date, “Arrives Thursday,” instead of “Ships in 1–2 business days.” Andy liked it, but the page was already selling. So they ran a trial: half of visitors saw the current page, half saw hers.
One in five U.S. shoppers who abandoned a checkout said delivery was too slow.Baymard Institute, 2025
A “Ships in 1–2 business days”
Visitors
1,000
Add to carts
100
Per 100
10.0
+20%
B Her idea: show the delivery date
Visitors
1,000
Add to carts
120
Per 100
12.0
Winner: B. 12 add-to-carts per 100 visitors instead of 10. That’s 20% more shoppers heading to checkout from the same budget.
Illustrative test from Kasia’s story. We call a winner when the difference holds up statistically and shows up in orders, not when one page is ahead for a day.
What shoppers buy changes with the calendar.
A bag that sells as a commuting tool in March sells as a gift in December. So the campaigns and pages rotate with the calendar, and the budget follows your inventory.
January
Returns, exchanges and gift cards
Retailers expect about 17% of holiday sales to come back. Easy size exchanges keep the sale, and gift-card shoppers get a page that helps them pick.
May–June
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day
Shoppers planned a record $38 billion for Mother’s Day and $27.9 billion for Father’s Day in 2026. Gift pages, gift notes and order-by dates go up weeks early.
Jul–Sept
Back to school and college
Families planned a record $103.5 billion for college and $43.3 billion for K–12 in 2026, and half of K–12 families planned to buy online. Commuter and laptop pages lead.
Nov–Dec
Black Friday through the holidays
U.S. shoppers spent a record $257.8 billion online in November and December 2025, and Cyber Monday was the biggest day of the year. Stock, budgets and shipping cutoffs get planned in summer.
Sources: NRF and Happy Returns Retail Returns Landscape, 2025; NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and back-to-school surveys, 2026; Adobe Analytics holiday shopping data, 2026.
It’s inventory, not a launch.
You don’t stock the shelves once and call it done. Marketing works the same way. Ads wear out, auctions get crowded before the holidays, copycats copy what works, and platforms change their rules every month. We check on it every day, so you can run the business.
What we watch, every day
Budgets and bids, matched to your margins and your stock.
Broken checkouts, product feeds and tracking. If something breaks, ads pause until it’s fixed.
Cost per order and return on ad spend, by product, every morning.
Fresh creative before the old videos wear out.
What marketplaces, big brands and copycats are doing.
It starts with a 30-minute call.
From “book a call” to campaigns that run while you pack orders.
1 minute
Book a call
Pick a time on Andy’s calendar and share a link to your store.
Before the call
We study your store
Your product pages, your reviews, your competitors and, if you share them, your numbers.
30 minutes
A call with Andy
What you sell, who buys it, what it costs to win a customer, and where the margin is.
About 2 hours
A test landing page
Your best seller, written in your customers’ words, with a button into your own checkout.
Kickoff
Agree on the goal
A target cost per order or return on ad spend that works with your margins, in writing.
10 days
The $500 test
$50 a day for ten days, paid straight to the ad platforms, to see what sells.
Then
Scale only what’s profitable
Budgets grow only while the numbers hold. If they slip, we pull back and fix it.
Always
Measure, carefully
Server-side conversion tracking that respects shoppers’ consent choices, checked against your store’s own sales.
You get your own rate, agreed before we start, and it goes down as your spend grows. Ask Andy for your number. Want to see it work first? Start with the $500 ten-day test: $50 a day, paid straight to the ad platforms.
Starting outGrowingScalingAt scale
Your rate is agreed before we start and steps down as your monthly ad spend grows. Ask Andy for your number.
Included in your rate
Customer and review research
Video production
Landing pages built and tested
Direct-response copywriting
Google search and Shopping campaigns
Meta, YouTube and ChatGPT ads
Retargeting and follow-up campaigns
Product feed cleanup
Daily budget management
Fresh creative before ads wear out
Ongoing A/B testing
Seasonal and launch planning
Keep your store and your checkout. We don’t rebuild what already works. We add landing pages, creative and campaigns around it, and every sale still lands in your store.
Selling on a marketplace too? Keep it. We focus on bringing shoppers to your own store, where the customer, the email list and the repeat order are yours.
Nothing goes out that your customers or the FTC would question.
Online stores have more rules than most founders realize, and we treat them as the brief, not the fine print. Every claim is backed by something real, approved by you, and checked before it runs.
No fake, bought or cherry-picked reviews, and no rewards for five stars, as the FTC’s 2024 rule on consumer reviews and testimonials requires.
Creators and affiliates say clearly that they were paid or gifted, following the FTC’s Endorsement Guides, updated in 2023.
“Made in USA” only when all or virtually all of the product is, under the FTC’s Made in USA Labeling Rule. Otherwise we say exactly what’s true, like “sewn in Chicago.”
Real “was” prices, real stock counts and delivery dates you can keep, under the FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing and its Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. No fake countdown timers.
Emails that follow CAN-SPAM, texts only with consent under the TCPA, and subscriptions with clear terms and an easy way to cancel, as the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act requires.
Kasia and Plover Pack Co. are composites, and this page tells you so. We are not your lawyer; your attorney has the final word.
Backpacks are just the start.
Apparel, home goods, pet supplies, beauty, gear and subscription boxes. Shopify stores, direct-to-consumer brands and Amazon sellers going direct. Different products, same playbook: find what makes yours better, show it in seconds, and put it in front of the shoppers looking for it.
Book your call with Andy.
Thirty minutes on your product, your customers and your numbers. If it’s a fit, your test landing page typically arrives about two hours later.
