Industries
Why e-commerce employees leave and how to understand why
Warehouse associates, support agents and fast-scaling teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between peaks.
8 min readRead article
E-commerce and D2C · Direct-to-consumer brands
HR for Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Brands: Founders, Growth Teams and Outsourced Operations
A D2C brand is usually a small core team steering a product, a website, a marketing budget and a web of vendors. Here is how to build the people side before the founders become the bottleneck.
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Share your requirementsA direct-to-consumer brand sells its own products to customers through its own website, apps and social channels, and often through marketplaces as a second leg. The in-house team is small and varied: founders, a brand and content group, performance marketers, a catalogue and website person, customer support, and a supply and operations lead. Manufacturing, warehousing, delivery and sometimes support sit with partners. Hiring happens in bursts after a funding round or a good quarter, titles are loose, and the founders still approve many small decisions. Pay is often a mix of salary and promised upside. The business has to keep selling through launches, festive sales and campaign spikes with the same few people. See also HR for e-commerce and D2C.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in direct-to-consumer brands, you may see
- Founders decide everything
- Roles are invented as you go
- Hiring follows panic, not a plan
- Growth hires are paid for numbers they do not control
- Equity talk replaces clear pay
- Partners carry the customer promise
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in direct-to-consumer brands
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
- Founders and co-founders
- Brand and content managers
- Performance marketing executives
- Website, catalogue and merchandising staff
- Customer experience executives
- Supply, procurement and vendor coordinators
- Operations and fulfilment coordinators
- Finance and admin executives
Where HR strains in direct-to-consumer brands
Founders decide everything
Pricing, hiring, creative and vendor choices all route through two or three people, so the team waits and good people stop proposing things.
Roles are invented as you go
One person is half marketer, half operations and half support, and nobody can say what a good month looks like for them.
Hiring follows panic, not a plan
A launch or a sale event triggers a rush of hires, then a quiet stretch with too many people on the same work.
Growth hires are paid for numbers they do not control
Spend, sales and return-on-ad figures swing with the market, which makes targets and incentives hard to defend.
Equity talk replaces clear pay
Promised upside is explained verbally, pay bands do not exist, and the first few joiners earn very differently for similar work.
Partners carry the customer promise
Packing, delivery and sometimes support are done by vendors, and the brand team spends its days chasing them rather than managing its own work.
HR topics for direct-to-consumer brands
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for e-commerce and d2c, not in general.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a direct-to-consumer brands business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Draw a simple structure with owners
Who owns each function, who decides what, and where the founders step back.
What this coversHide
Draw a simple structure with owners
Who owns each function, who decides what, and where the founders step back.
What this coversHideWho owns each function, who decides what, and where the founders step back. Start with the organisation design work and keep it to one page.
Write role outlines for the first twenty roles
Purpose, five outcomes and who the role works with, so growth, brand and operations stop overlapping.
What this coversHide
Write role outlines for the first twenty roles
Purpose, five outcomes and who the role works with, so growth, brand and operations stop overlapping.
What this coversHidePurpose, five outcomes and who the role works with, so growth, brand and operations stop overlapping. The role design and job descriptions service covers it.
Plan hiring against launches and sales
A calendar of when the team needs to grow and which roles are permanent, so hiring is steady.
What this coversHide
Plan hiring against launches and sales
A calendar of when the team needs to grow and which roles are permanent, so hiring is steady.
What this coversHideA calendar of when the team needs to grow and which roles are permanent, so hiring is steady. The HR strategy and workforce planning work builds it.
Set pay bands and explain any upside
A salary range per level and a written note of any bonus or equity, so two people doing similar work are not paid by whoever negotiated best.
What this coversHide
Set pay bands and explain any upside
A salary range per level and a written note of any bonus or equity, so two people doing similar work are not paid by whoever negotiated best.
What this coversHideA salary range per level and a written note of any bonus or equity, so two people doing similar work are not paid by whoever negotiated best. See compensation benchmarking.
Agree how reviews work for variable results
A short quarterly conversation with a few outcomes the person controls, kept apart from raw spend or sales numbers.
What this coversHide
Agree how reviews work for variable results
A short quarterly conversation with a few outcomes the person controls, kept apart from raw spend or sales numbers.
What this coversHideA short quarterly conversation with a few outcomes the person controls, kept apart from raw spend or sales numbers. The performance management process sets it out.
Start by checking where you stand
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirements- List the decisions that currently need a founder and mark which could be handed over.
- Write one page describing what each person in the team is accountable for.
- Compare what the last five hires were told about pay with what they receive.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the employment, record-keeping and licensing obligations that apply to your business.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
How GullyHR helps
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
- Organisation design
A clear structure and decision rights, so the team can act without waiting for a founder.
- Role design and job descriptions
Role outlines that separate brand, growth and operations work, and make hiring briefs easy to write.
- Compensation benchmarking
Pay bands and a written note on bonus or equity, so offers are consistent.
- Performance management process
A simple review rhythm for roles whose numbers move with the market.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in e-commerce and d2c, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Management
Everyone reports to the founder: when and how to redesign the structure
A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead article
HR Management
"We need two more people": the headcount plan nobody wrote
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 min readRead article
HR Management
Salary bands for SMEs: building grades when you have never had any
Most salary structures grew one negotiation at a time. How to build grades and bands from what you already pay, without repricing everybody at once.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Usually when the team passes the point where the founders know every person's work and pay, which often arrives sooner than expected. The first signs are inconsistent offers, unclear roles and founders stuck approving small things.
Many brands start with part-time or outsourced support for structure, hiring and pay, then bring in a full-time person when the team and workload justify it. The right moment depends on headcount and how many open issues you have.
Pick outcomes they influence, such as campaign execution, testing discipline and reporting quality, along with business numbers they share with others. Pure spend or sales targets punish people for market swings.
In writing, in plain words, with the conditions and timing. Verbal promises made during hiring are the most common source of later disagreement. Take advice from a qualified professional on the legal form.
Plan the extra work early, decide which tasks can wait, agree who covers support and operations, and give time off afterwards. Doing it by goodwill alone works once and then fails.
We would look at three things from your own team: the decisions waiting on founders, the overlap between growth, brand and operations roles, and how offers and pay have been set. A sensible first piece of work is a one-page structure with role outlines for your core team. Scope and deliverables are agreed in writing before we begin.
More on HR for e-commerce and d2c
All 8 business types in e-commerce and d2c · Find another business type
Marketplace sellersSubscription box businessesSocial commerce and influencer-led sellersQuick commerce and dark store operatorsE-commerce fulfilment centres and warehousesCustomer support teams for online storesOrganisation Design in e-commerce and d2cHR Strategy and Workforce Planning in e-commerce and d2cCompensation, Payroll and Benefits in e-commerce and d2c
See all HR topics for e-commerce and d2c, or another industry.