A UK games retailer built a community around their most loyal customers and grew orders by over 70% in a year, reducing their dependence on paid advertising in the process.
Client Overview
A UK-based online retailer selling games, trading cards, and related products to a passionate and growing community of enthusiasts. The business had solid foundations, a loyal customer base, strong product knowledge, and genuine traction in a competitive market. What it needed was clarity on where its biggest opportunity sat.
The Challenge
When this retailer began working with Brainstorm Club, the business was growing but almost entirely through paid advertising. Revenue was healthy but fragile, dependent on ad spend to sustain it. The moment advertising slowed, so did sales.
The community around the brand was real and engaged. Customers were enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and loyal. They talked about the brand, recommended products, and came back repeatedly. But nobody inside the business had identified that community as the primary growth engine rather than a byproduct of advertising spend.
That was the thing nobody inside the business could see.
The business also faced a structural challenge common to retailers in high-demand niches. The most sought-after products were selling out almost instantly, creating frustration among genuine customers and eroding trust in the brand experience.
The Intervention
The work did not start with a new channel, a new tool, or a new campaign. It started with a conversation that reframed where the real opportunity sat.
The customers buying from this retailer were not just buyers. They were enthusiasts who talked about the brand, recommended products, and came back repeatedly. That community, properly cultivated through content, was worth more than any advertising campaign. Building around it rather than relying on paid acquisition was the strategic shift the business needed.
Brainstorm Club identified that opportunity and supported the business in acting on it across three areas.
Community and content as the primary growth engine
The business began investing seriously in content that served its community rather than simply promoting products. Blog content, video, and community-focused publishing created a growing audience of engaged enthusiasts. Brand search, a reliable indicator of genuine community interest, began rising consistently. Organic traffic that had previously been negligible became a significant and compounding source of revenue.
Reducing dependence on paid advertising
With a growing community and mailing list, the business began channelling its most sought-after products through owned channels rather than paid ones. High-demand stock was sold exclusively through the subscriber list, with no advertising spend required. The products that had previously driven the highest advertising costs began driving the highest margins.
Protecting the customer experience
Systems were put in place to ensure loyal customers were prioritised for high-demand products, removing the frustration of selling out before genuine buyers could purchase. This decision reinforced trust in the brand and strengthened the community further.
The Results
Orders and revenue grew by over 70% in a year. The business reached close to £1M in annual revenue, approximately double the previous year. Approximately half of all revenue now comes from non-advertising sources, compared to near-total reliance on paid advertising when the work began. The mailing list became the primary sales channel for the highest-margin products, generating revenue at effectively zero acquisition cost.
The advertising did not stop working. The business simply stopped depending on it.
Client Testimonial
“The community has done amazingly well and we’ve pretty much doubled revenue compared to last year. Brand search is just continually going up and that’s coming from the content and community we’ve built. Business has been going extremely well and I’m really happy with how things are going.”
Conclusion
The biggest opportunities in a business are often not visible from the inside. In this case the opportunity was hiding in plain sight: a loyal, passionate community that was being treated as a side effect of advertising rather than as the engine itself.
One conversation changed that framing. The investment in community and content that followed compounded into results that paid advertising alone never could have produced. Revenue doubled. Margins improved. The business became more resilient, less dependent on any single channel, and better positioned for sustainable growth.
That is what happens when the right thing gets seen at the right time.
