Sports equipment supplier Friction Labs reduced ACOS by 30% while consistently increasing sales

The need: scale the marketing team’s ability to effectively manage Amazon ads

Friction Labs is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of climbing chalk and other accessories and apparel for climbers. Founded in 2014 by Kevin Brown and Keah Kalantari, Friction Labs’ premium products gained instant popularity among professional climbers and athletes. This early success inspired them to expand sales worldwide through a combination of their own website promotion, affiliate marketing, and a foray into Amazon marketplace and advertising.

As Friction Labs grew, so did the complexity of their Amazon advertising. And, as a relatively new brand name competing for sales and subscriptions in a niche category, it took on greater importance. Kalantari, who's responsible for Friction Labs’ sales and marketing, realized that his small team lacked the bandwidth to keep up with the demands of managing Amazon accounts across multiple product lines and markets. He also recognized the value of a data-driven strategy, but his team lacked the tools and expertise to discern the most relevant metrics and unlock their insights.

The solution: Intentwise’s technology platform and services

Kalantari was looking for a partner with the expertise to leverage Amazon’s ever-evolving capabilities and help Friction Labs accelerate its growth trajectory. Intentwise’s technology platform, coupled with support from its advertising experts, served as an extension of Kalantari’s team, instantly scaling its capacity.

The engagement began by using the Intentwise technology platform to conduct a detailed audit of Friction Labs’ Amazon account and creating an opportunity roadmap. The next step was to implement this guide through biweekly sprints, ultimately revamping the entire account structure. Keyword and product targeting portfolios were expanded and bids were continuously monitored and optimized to meet advertising cost of sales (ACOS) targets. A regular cadence of experimentation was established to determine which changes yielded the best results, and the insights gained from advertising were then used to inform product descriptions and related content, thereby improving organic, search-based rankings.

The result: dramatic reduction in ACOS paired with a sharp rise in sales

Within just three months of the engagement, Friction Labs had yielded outstanding results. The Intentwise platform, combined with the Intentwise team’s expertise, helped Friction Labs take steps that had measurable impacts, including:

• Identifying key opportunities in customer buyer patterns by the hour and setting up algorithmic bid management and dayparting rules
• Conducting detailed keyword research and recommending updates to product listings that ultimately elevated multiple products’ organic rankings to the top three positions on page one of search results
• Consistently experimenting with Amazon capabilities—such as Sponsored Display, Product Targeting, and Amazon Posts—to determine which had the greatest effect on product performance

The cumulative effect of these efforts was a 30% drop in ACOS and a 50% increase in actual sales. The insights, automation, and recommendations the Intentwise platform provides, combined with support from the customer success team, reduced the time and energy the Friction Labs team was spending on Amazon advertising while greatly improving the results.