Growing revenue feels great. The first £1m, then £3m to £4m then up to and beyond £10m.
More customers. More orders. More scale.
But growth brings costs with it too.
Product costs rise. Fulfilment gets more expensive. Payroll increases. Acquisition costs change. Returns eat into margin. Discounts creep upwards. Infrastructure that worked perfectly well at one size needs upgrading at another.
What is the extra revenue actually worth?
Not because revenue doesn’t matter. Obviously it does.
But £1m of additional revenue at a healthy contribution is very different from £1m that requires disproportionately more marketing spend, discounting, fulfilment cost and overhead to generate.
And sometimes the answer isn’t to stop growing.
It’s to find the bits of growth that are worth more.
Which customers generate better margin? Which products? Which acquisition sources? Where are discounts actually changing behaviour, rather than simply giving margin away? Where are costs increasing faster than revenue?
And what happens to profit if we change one of those things?
As costs rise, I think these questions become more important, not less.
More revenue is good. More valuable revenue with sustainable profit is better.
