Cosyworld, DTC Growth & International Expansion

Active Mandate · Fractional Marketing & Growth Executive · Home & Living (DTC) · Germany / International · 2025–Ongoing

This project documents my work as a Fractional Executive supporting Cosyworld with the transition from a marketplace-heavy revenue model toward a scalable, international direct-to-consumer (DTC) growth strategy.

The mandate focuses on reducing platform dependency, building international DTC infrastructure, and aligning product, fulfillment, and marketing to enable sustainable, margin-aware growth.

Context

• Company: Cosyworld GmbH
• Industry: E-commerce, Home & Living (Adjustable Beds, CosyLift)
• Geography: Germany (core market), international expansion across multiple European markets
• Timeframe: Initial discussions in March 2025; formal engagement from mid-2025; ongoing
• Role & mandate: Fractional Executive / DTC Marketing Specialist, responsible for strategic marketing and growth direction to support international DTC expansion

Starting point

At the start of the engagement, Cosyworld faced a structural growth limitation driven by platform concentration and operational complexity.

Key challenges included:

• Marketplace dependenceA significant share of revenue was generated through a single third-party platform, limiting control over:
  • Brand experience
  • Customer relationships
  • Data and attribution
• Inefficient growth dynamicsInvestment in multiple paid channels generated visibility and traffic, but did not consistently translate into predictable, efficient growth.
• Technical and operational ambiguity
  • Limited clarity around customer data flows across systems
  • Inconsistent technical foundations for international DTC rollout

Qualitatively:

• Existing marketing assets were perceived as overly corporate
• Content lacked emotional relevance and storytelling depth, particularly in performance and social contexts

The primary constraint was speed with alignment:

Cosyworld needed to establish a scalable international DTC setup while aligning a large organization around a new growth direction.

Scope of responsibility

Responsible for

• Strategic review & discovery
  • Leading a structured growth and channel review phase
  • Assessing SEO, paid media, TV, and social performance
• International DTC rollout strategy
  • Defining the strategic and technical requirements for international DTC expansion
  • Supporting the setup of country-specific DTC entry points
• Marketplace optimization
  • Improving marketplace visibility and structural performance
  • Aligning marketplace activity with broader DTC objectives
• Product & fulfillment strategy
  • Supporting a shift toward alternative fulfillment models for international markets
  • Improving flexibility, cost structure, and product availability
• Marketing asset direction
  • Guiding a shift toward more human, emotionally resonant creative
  • Supporting the development of new performance-ready creative formats

Explicitly not responsible for

• Day-to-day ERP or fulfillment system operations
• Direct execution of TV media buying

Collaboration model

Worked closely with:

• Executive leadership and founders
• Internal marketing and operations teams
• Specialized external agencies across marketplace and performance disciplines

Key decisions & initiatives

Strategic shift toward DTC

A central decision was to reposition DTC as a primary growth lever, rather than treating it as a secondary channel alongside marketplaces.

This included:

• Building dedicated international DTC entry points
• Reframing marketplaces as part of a broader channel mix, not the core business

Fulfillment and operational direction

To unlock long-term scalability:

• Alternative fulfillment approaches were evaluated and initiated
• Trade-offs between operational complexity and strategic control were accepted deliberately

Content and brand evolution

Another key initiative was evolving the brand’s communication style:

• From static, product-centric messaging
• Toward more human, benefit-driven storytelling, particularly in performance contexts

What was reinforced or questioned

Reinforced

• Structural marketplace optimization
• International DTC rollout foundations
• Creative renewal for performance channels

Questioned

• Over-reliance on individual channels as primary growth drivers

Outcomes (current state)

• A clear strategic and technical roadmap for international DTC growth was established
• The organization aligned around a DTC-first direction
• Structural improvements to cost, flexibility, and control were identified and initiated

From an organizational perspective:

• Decision-making shifted from channel-centric to system-centric
• Focus moved from traffic generation to repeatable, margin-aware growth

Lessons learned

What I would repeat

• Running a structured, data-driven discovery phase to identify the true growth constraint
• Using that clarity to align teams around a meaningful strategic pivot

What I would do differently

• Prioritizing foundational data and system clarity even earlier

What others can learn

Marketplace-led growth can scale quickly — but it often caps long-term control and profitability.

Building a robust DTC capability, even with added complexity, is essential for sustainable growth.