From 500K to 3.5 Million
The brand
Functional Nutrition supplies the products you find in the vending machine at your gym – protein powder, protein bars, energy drinks, electrolytes, pre-workout, creatine, vitamins and more. Their ambition was to build a direct-to-consumer channel that could compete with the big players in the sports nutrition space – but on very different terms.
The situation
When I joined in October 2019, the webshop had been live for just a few months. Built on a minimal Drupal setup, it carried around 10–15 products and had the bare infrastructure to process an order. There was no email automation, no CRM strategy, no structured approach to product launches and no real commercial foundation to build on.
The ambition was clear. The execution was not yet there.
The approach
Sports nutrition is a category where the temptation to push short-term sales is constant – flash discounts, aggressive retargeting, promotional noise. That wasn’t the direction.
The goal was to build something that felt premium and trustworthy – a brand customers chose to come back to, not one they bought from once because the price was right. Every decision, from email cadence to product launch timing to CRO prioritisation, was made with that in mind.
The numbers are the result of that consistency. Not a single campaign. Not a discount cycle. A commercial foundation built to last.
What I did
Over 2.5 years, I was responsible for building and running the commercial ecommerce operation – across platform, email, CRO, content, product launches and paid traffic collaboration.
Email & CRM – built from scratch in Agillic Agillic is an enterprise-level CRM and marketing automation platform. When I arrived, nothing was set up. I built the entire flow architecture from the ground up: welcome series, win-back flows, segmentation logic and data enrichment content. Every automation that ran was designed, briefed and implemented under my ownership.
CRO & development – sprint-based prioritisation Conversion rate optimisation and site improvements were executed in structured development sprints, prioritised by cost-benefit analysis and managed in collaboration with an external agency. I owned the scope, the briefing and the project leadership across all sprints.
Content & brand building A significant part of the work was breaking down the barriers that keep most people away from sports nutrition. Protein powder and pre-workout have historically been associated with a very specific type of customer – the gym-obsessed, the bodybuilder, the performance athlete.
Functional Nutrition’s ambition was different. We wanted to reach people who cared about a healthy, active lifestyle without the intimidation factor.
This meant building content that reflected that vision: recipes and everyday inspiration showing how to use protein in normal meals and routines, athlete and ambassador features told as genuine stories rather than promotional material, and a consistent brand voice that felt approachable, credible and real.
The content wasn’t decoration. It was the foundation for why people trusted the brand enough to buy – and come back.
Product launches – structure from the sneaker world Coming from ARKK Copenhagen and Rezet Sneaker Store, I brought a launch methodology that sports nutrition brands rarely apply: coordinated timing, channel alignment and commercial planning built around the launch moment rather than bolted on after. This changed how Functional Nutrition went to market with new products.
Paid traffic & SEO I worked closely with an internal resource on paid traffic and SEO – contributing commercial and ecommerce perspective to channel strategy and ensuring alignment between paid activity and the rest of the customer journey.
Shopify migration A full platform migration from Drupal to Shopify was scoped, planned and pitched to the business – including agency selection and full project preparation. The project was ultimately pulled by leadership before execution, shortly before the D2C channel was wound down.
The result
Revenue grew from DKK 500K to DKK 3.5M over 2.5 years. Conversion rate went from approximately 1.5% to over 3%. Average order value increased by 15%.
Growth wasn’t driven by a single initiative – it was the compounding effect of building the right foundation, launching products properly and continuously improving the customer journey across every touchpoint.
And it was done without sacrificing the brand. No discount cycles. No short-term noise. Just a consistent, considered approach to building something that lasted.