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At Affiliate Summit East 2025, e-commerce leaders explored one of the biggest challenges facing online brands today: how to grow beyond seasonal sales spikes and keep customers engaged all year long.
The conversation featured:
- Scott Cunningham – Founder & CEO, Merchant Mastery
- Dawn Kidd – U.S. General Manager, Kadalys Skincare
- Amy Levine – Founder, Seed2Stone Jewelry
Together, they shared how consistent storytelling, structured marketing systems, and brand-owned events can transform unpredictable sales into reliable growth.
Their shared message was clear:the most successful e-commerce brands don’t wait for demand, they create it.
The E-Commerce Reality Check
Today’s e-commerce environment is unpredictable. Ad costs rise, algorithms shift, and viral success rarely lasts. While major holidays like Black Friday still matter, they can no longer sustain long-term profitability.
Scott emphasized that real growth comes from consistency:
“Every brand can win Black Friday. But the great brands win every other month too.”
Instead of reacting to trends or platforms, leading merchants are learning to engineer their own excitement, and drive story-driven events that drive repeat purchases and deepen brand connection throughout the year.
The Garden Framework: Growing Predictable Sales
Scott introduced his “E-Commerce Garden Framework,” a growth roadmap built on sustainability and rhythm rather than short-term surges.
- Plant the Seed: Launch your product and attract your first customers.
- Validate the Product: Confirm demand and refine your offer.
- Find Product-Market Fit: Nurture repeat sales and loyalty.
- Grow an Evergreen Engine: Establish consistent daily revenue through ads, email, and optimization.
- Harvest the Garden: Run story-driven campaigns or events every few weeks to create excitement and new bursts of growth.
This model turns marketing into an ongoing cultivation process. Instead of relying on one big holiday, brands build smaller “harvests” year-round; think launches, collaborations, and community events that continually renew interest.
Story Selling: The Engine Behind Every Campaign
At the centre of this system is Story Selling, Merchant Mastery’s framework for turning brand stories into conversion tools.
Scott outlined five components that make any marketing message resonate:
- Category of One Headline: Speak to a desire your audience already has.
- Origin Story: Explain why you’re uniquely obsessed with solving their problem.
- Differentiation Stack: Highlight what makes your offer distinct and valuable.
- Testimonial Stack: Let customer stories address objections for you.
- Offer Stack: End with a clear, motivating reason to act now.
When these elements come together, every email, ad, or page becomes a story event—an educational and emotional experience that sells naturally.
Evergreen Meets Event-Driven: The Compounding Promotions Model
Scott also shared his “Compounding Promotions Model,” which blends consistency with creativity.
The idea: maintain an evergreen baseline of steady sales, and layer on event-style promotions every six to eight weeks.
Each campaign builds on the last, re-engaging past customers and bringing in new ones. The result is steady, upward compounding growth—without the burnout or unpredictability of chasing one-off wins.
The key metric that drives this approach is 90-day Lifetime Value (LTV)—how much a customer spends in the three months after their first purchase.
“When storytelling and event cycles are consistent,” Scott explained, “that number climbs fast. Your ads pay back quicker, and your growth becomes sustainable.”
Case Study: Seed2Stone – Building Demand Through Product Launches
For Amy Levine, founder of Seed2Stone Jewelry, demand generation isn’t about endless discounts it’s about anticipation and trust. Her brand, which specializes in lab-grown diamonds, needed a way to attract new audiences while keeping loyal customers engaged between major holidays.
Amy realized that well-planned product launches could serve both purposes. Rather than simply adding new items to the catalog, each launch became a focused storytelling moment that showcased innovation, quality, and customer connection.
She designed a repeatable six-to-eight-week rhythm: pre-launch teasers, behind-the-scenes content, lead-generation ads, and email storytelling that built excitement. The final reveal was framed as a moment of shared discovery, not a hard sell.
This approach produced measurable results. When Seed2Stone introduced its “Big O Hoop” earrings - a $1,200 product positioned as the perfect everyday luxury - it quickly became the brand’s best-selling item. Average order value jumped from about $300 to $500, even without discounting.
Amy’s biggest insight was that a launch isn’t just about the product, it’s about creating an event that deepens your relationship with customers. Each campaign generated new leads, reignited past buyers, and gave her team a clear marketing rhythm they could sustain year-round.
Her strategy demonstrates that when storytelling is structured, every product launch becomes its own demand engine.
Case Study: Kadalys – Owning the Calendar with “Banana Week”
Dawn Kidd, U.S. General Manager at Kadalys Skincare, took a different route to year-round demand: she created an entirely new shopping moment unique to the brand.
Built around Kadalys’s French Caribbean heritage and its signature ingredient, upcycled bananas, she launched National Banana Week, timed with National Banana Day and Earth Month.
Banana Week evolved into a month-long storytelling celebration of sustainability and innovation. It featured:
- Collaborations with complementary brands, such as a banana liqueur partner.
- Influencer events and virtual “Sip and Shop” nights.
- Educational campaigns linking Kadalys’s products to eco-conscious beauty.
The event now stands as Kadalys’s own version of Black Friday; an owned, mission-driven moment that customers anticipate every spring.
As Dawn put it, “If you don’t believe in your story, why would anyone else?” Banana Week works because it’s authentic to the brand’s purpose and gives customers a reason to celebrate with them.
Actionable Insights from the Panel
During the Q&A, the speakers offered grounded advice for brands looking to strengthen their demand-generation strategies:
- Cart abandonment is often a messaging issue. Clarify benefits and reduce friction before checkout.
- No new products? Reposition existing ones with new angles—different use cases, limited editions, or refreshed storytelling.
- Discount fatigue is real. Customers respond better to curiosity, transparency, and community than to constant sales.
- Discontinuations deserve their own moment. Treat them like mini-events to drive urgency and emotional engagement.
Each insight returned to a single theme: clarity, consistency, and authenticity create confidence—and confidence drives conversions.
The Future of Year-Round Growth
What comes next for e-commerce? A future where brands no longer depend on fleeting sales holidays or algorithmic luck.
Instead, growth will come from repeatable storytelling systems, owned marketing events, and meaningful customer relationships that compound over time.
Scott Cunningham summarized it best:
“In this market, you can’t wait for Black Friday. You have to create your own.”
