How Consumer Brands Can Succeed During Economic Slowdowns 

Economic slowdowns test every assumption consumer brands make, from how they price and position products to how they acquire and retain customers. And while economic signals are rarely clear, whether it’s persistent inflation, tightening tariffs, or declining consumer confidence, the easy default is to hit pause. Delay launches. Cut back on marketing. Wait for clarity. But that’s not how leaders thrive.

Economic slowdowns are more than a dip in demand; they’re catalysts for change. They expose inefficiencies, accelerate shifts in consumer behavior, and force brands to confront outdated assumptions about pricing, sourcing, fulfillment, and channel strategy. Decisiveness becomes a competitive advantage. Brands that move quickly to strengthen customer relationships, refine go-to-market strategies, and streamline operations are better equipped to endure and often emerge stronger.

Companies that treat disruption not as a detour but as a turning point are the ones best positioned for long-term resilience. This playbook isn’t about reacting to a crisis; it’s about evolving through it.

The New Consumer Mindset in Times of Economic Uncertainty

During an economic slowdown, consumers don’t stop spending, they just spend differently. Essentials take priority over nice-to-haves. A $15 impulse buy now gets second-guessed, and a $150 purchase might take days or weeks to consider. For brands, this means the value equation isn’t gone; it’s just changed.

Consumers are more discerning. They’re trading down in some categories (think generic over name brand), while doubling down in others (investing in health, home, or long-lasting essentials). They’re asking: Is this worth it? Will it last? Can I trust this brand?

That’s why building trust through transparency at every step of the journey is critical. Clear product descriptions, honest shipping expectations, and visible reviews or social proof help reduce hesitation and reinforce credibility. Showing real customer photos, breaking down ingredients or materials, and clearly communicating return policies all help remove friction and build confidence before the purchase.

Thrive Market offers a strong example of smart thinking during an economic slowdown. In late 2022, with inflation climbing and many Americans already adjusting their spending habits, Thrive launched Thrive Rewards, a centralized savings hub designed to help members find, track, and maximize deals across the site. 

The move came in response to growing price sensitivity, even among health-conscious consumers, and a recognition that “value” was becoming as important as “values.”

Rather than leaning on deep discounts, Thrive bundled together cashback offers, BOGOs, free gifts with purchase, and price matching, while ensuring those benefits were available to all members, not just the highest spenders. As CEO Nick Green put it, “We don’t want to create programs that are just doing discounting for discounting’s sake… We always try to also be doing something that adds value beyond just the discount itself.”

Thrive’s approach, centered on transparency, accessibility, and value-rich experiences, is exactly the kind of move that brands today should study and adopt.

Trust also influences brand choice in ways that weren’t as critical during boom times. Is your brand ethical? Are your products responsibly sourced? Do you follow through on your messaging? These aren’t just PR talking points—they’re conversion factors.

And because decision-making cycles are longer, brands need to rethink their funnel. That might mean retargeting a product viewer a week later with a loyalty offer, or sending an educational email that builds confidence before a high-consideration purchase. Simple reminders aren’t enough. You need to re-engage with intent.

In a down market, winning brands aren’t louder—they’re more useful. They align with what buyers value most: clear benefits, lower perceived risk, and trust in the brand behind the product. If you’re not actively adapting how you sell to meet those expectations, you’re leaving the door open for someone else to earn the trust and the sale.

That’s why the next move smart brands make isn’t just about what they sell, but how they price it. As consumers become more cautious and values-driven, your pricing strategy can no longer be just about numbers, it has to signal meaning, quality, and fairness. You have to frame value in a way that earns loyalty and preserves margin.

Strategic Pricing: Balancing Margin and Meaning

In an economic slowdown, it’s tempting to compete on price, but discounting your way through a downturn often backfires. Across-the-board price cuts may boost short-term conversions, but they erode brand equity, squeeze margins, and condition customers to expect perpetual markdowns.

Instead, focus on pricing strategies that preserve value while giving consumers more ways to say yes. Here’s how smart brands are navigating the balance between affordability and profitability:

• Bundle strategically: Group high-margin accessories or add-ons with bestsellers to increase perceived value without cutting base prices.
• Offer flexible payment options: Integrate BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) tools like Afterpay or Klarna to make higher-priced items feel more accessible without reducing sticker price.
• Introduce tiered offers: Let customers self-select based on budget. For example, create “good, better, best” pricing levels that maintain quality perception while offering options.
• Add value through perks: Free returns, member-only discounts, or early access to drops can help justify price points without deep discounts.
• Leverage subscriptions or loyalty rewards: Retention-focused models help offset rising acquisition costs and provide predictable revenue.
• Justify pricing with narrative: Use PDPs, emails, and ad creative to explain the why behind your pricing—whether it’s sustainability, durability, or customer service.

When tariffs or input costs force prices up, don’t hide from it—own the narrative. Communicate transparently and tie price to purpose. Brands like Everlane and Patagonia do this exceptionally well.

• Everlane built its entire pricing model around “Radical Transparency,” breaking down the exact cost of materials, labor, transportation, and markup for each product. When costs rise due to tariffs, supply chain issues, or ethical sourcing, they explain why in plain language, often through emails or product pages. This approach turns pricing into a trust-building moment, not a defensive one.
• Patagonia, on the other hand, justifies its premium pricing by highlighting environmental impact and product longevity. Through its “Worn Wear” program and lifetime repair guarantees, it reframes higher price points as investments in sustainability and durability, showing that paying more today means owning less, longer.

This kind of transparency doesn’t just justify cost—it reinforces brand values. When customers are weighing every purchase more carefully, clear, value-aligned pricing builds trust and keeps your brand positioned as worth paying for.

Also, get specific with your audience strategy:

• Use data to identify high-LTV customers and tailor pricing offers to maximize retention or referrals. Tools like Triple Whale can help ecommerce brands segment high-value cohorts and track long-term performance by channel, product, and customer behavior.
• Avoid over-discounting first-time buyers if they’re unlikely to return. Instead, use platforms like Klaviyo to build automated post-purchase flows that turn one-time shoppers into repeat customers with tailored messaging, loyalty offers, or personalized upsells.

Marketing Smarter: Empathy, Efficiency, and ROI

When budgets tighten, every dollar you spend on marketing needs to work harder. But cutting visibility altogether is one of the fastest ways to lose momentum, especially when consumer attention is still up for grabs. The key isn’t spending less, it’s spending smarter.

Successful brands in a downturn focus on efficient channels, agile messaging, and performance-first strategies. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Prioritize high-ROI channels

The most resilient brands focus on channels that deliver strong, sustainable returns, especially when budgets are under pressure. That includes organic content, email, SMS, affiliate programs, and native shopping platforms like TikTok Shop. 

Organic content, whether through social media or SEO, helps drive engagement and discovery without media spend, and often reveals what messaging or creative is worth amplifying through paid. Together, these high-ROI channels help brands stay visible, build trust, and convert more efficiently.

• Organic content—including TikTok videos, Reels, and SEO-rich blogs—builds community, drives traffic, and enhances brand visibility without paid amplification.
• TikTok Shop enables frictionless shopping tied directly to content, and often outperforms traditional paid social in terms of cost per acquisition.
• Email and SMS, especially through platforms like Klaviyo, drive predictable revenue at low cost and allow for deep segmentation and personalization.
• Influencer and affiliate programs can scale reach efficiently by leveraging trusted voices, often without upfront media spend. Product sampling or paid boosts may be needed to maximize impact, but these programs typically offer strong ROI and flexibility, especially when structured for performance.

Make Retention Marketing a Core Growth Strategy

Before you pour more budget into acquisition, take a hard look at how you’re supporting the customers you already have. Acquiring a new customer can cost five to seven times more than retaining an existing one, and yet many brands still focus most of their spend on the top of the funnel.

Retention isn’t just cheaper—it’s more reliable. Loyal customers are more likely to repurchase, refer, and engage with your content, which in turn improves your efficiency across every channel. Whether through post-purchase flows, loyalty perks, or personalized winback campaigns, the highest-ROI brands make retention a centerpiece of their marketing strategy, not an afterthought.

Yet many brands still prioritize acquisition because it feels more scalable or easier to track. But the real edge comes from understanding your highest-value customers, segmenting based on behavior, and tailoring creative to keep them engaged.

Retention marketing isn’t just a follow-up email—it’s a strategy. Whether it’s reminding customers to replenish, recommending complementary products, or rewarding loyalty with exclusive perks, the brands that win are the ones that make every post-purchase interaction count.

Match your message to the moment

Ditch the hype. Replace urgency-for-the-sake-of-it with genuine utility. In your ads and content, focus on how your product solves real problems—saves time, lasts longer, or improves daily life.

For example, instead of “Buy Now Before It’s Gone,” try “Why This One Item Has Become a Daily Essential for 100,000+ Customers.”

Run campaigns that can prove their impact

Invest in creative that’s built for conversion, not just awareness. UGC-style video, customer reviews, and unboxing or how-to content often outperform polished brand spots because they feel authentic and help buyers imagine the product in their lives.

Stay agile with creative testing

Consumer sentiment is always evolving. What resonates one week might fall flat the next, especially on fast-moving platforms like TikTok and Meta, where trends shift daily. Brands need to continuously test, learn, and iterate to stay relevant and responsive.

Tools like Motion or Insense can streamline creative sourcing and performance feedback loops for rapid testing.

Channel Resilience: Why Ownership Is Everything

In uncertain economic conditions, relying too heavily on any one channel, especially a third-party one, is a risk few brands can afford. Wholesale orders slow. Retail partnerships dry up. Paid social gets more expensive. But your owned channels? That’s where you build lasting control and resilience.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) infrastructure isn’t just a sales channel—it’s a strategic advantage. It gives you direct access to your customers, full visibility into their behaviors, and total control over margins, messaging, and experience.

But ownership goes beyond the platform; it includes the relationship. Building a community around your DTC brand can deepen customer loyalty, drive organic growth through advocacy and UGC, and create an emotional connection that’s harder to disrupt than any single sales channel.

Here’s what a strong channel mix looks like for resilient brands:

• Your website: The central hub for storytelling, conversion, and brand control. Use tools like Shopify or Recharge (for subscriptions) to optimize checkout flows, product merchandising, and post-purchase engagement.
• Community: Brands that invest in building a loyal customer community create a powerful retention and advocacy engine. Whether through Facebook Groups, Discord, or private platforms, strong communities drive repeat purchases, fuel word of mouth, and reinforce brand values.
• SMS and email: Owned audiences with high engagement and low cost. Platforms like Klaviyo help you trigger messages based on real-time behavior, such as abandoned carts, product views, and replenishment cycles, keeping your brand top of mind.
• Loyalty apps or portals: Programs that reward repeat purchases not only increase lifetime value but also strengthen customer relationships during tighter times.
• Social storefronts: Selling directly through TikTok, Instagram, or Pinterest combines community with commerce. These platforms allow seamless shopping experiences tied to discovery and engagement.

For brands navigating tariff volatility or rising international shipping costs, localization is critical. 

Consider warehousing inventory in the U.S. or using a 3PL provider like ShipBob to fulfill orders domestically. This reduces shipping times, avoids some tariff impacts, and improves delivery consistency, all factors that build trust during uncertain times.

Brands that invest in DTC infrastructure, retention-first strategies, and fulfillment flexibility are better equipped to weather channel disruptions and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

Operational Efficiency and Lean Innovation

The most resilient brands don’t try to do everything—they double down on what drives results. In challenging times, clarity and focus become strategic advantages.

Start with your product catalog. Not every SKU deserves a seat at the table. Identify which products drive the majority of your margin and which ones create noise, and then streamline them. 

This isn’t about slashing; it’s about focusing on what sells, what scales, and what supports your brand promise.

Next, examine your tech stack. Many ecommerce businesses accumulate tools over time—email platforms, analytics dashboards, shipping software, CRO tools—but few regularly evaluate what’s essential. Audit your stack through the lens of ROI and simplicity.

Recommended tools to boost efficiency and ROI:

• Triple Whale: A comprehensive analytics platform that consolidates performance data into one dashboard, helping brands monitor profit by product, channel, and cohort. It’s a premium tool, but one that can unlock major ROI by guiding smarter marketing and inventory decisions.
• Klaviyo: Known for email and SMS automation, Klaviyo enables brands to build behavior-based journeys and retention campaigns that drive repeat revenue. While not the cheapest option, its deep segmentation capabilities and lifecycle insights make it a valuable long-term investment.
• Gorgias: A customer support platform built for ecommerce brands. By centralizing support across email, chat, and social channels, it helps teams respond faster and convert service moments into sales opportunities.
• ShipBob: A leading 3PL partner that helps ecommerce brands streamline fulfillment through distributed warehousing, faster shipping, and automated inventory management. For brands scaling operations, ShipBob can reduce cost-to-serve and improve delivery consistency.

When it comes to innovation, an economic slowdown isn’t the time to chase shiny objects. Expansion, whether it’s into new categories, new markets, or new platforms, should only happen if it directly supports customer retention, improves margin, or strengthens your operational backbone.

Ask:

• Will this improve our LTV or conversion rate?
• Will this reduce dependency on vulnerable channels or suppliers?
• Will this help us deliver faster, better, or cheaper?

Audit operations through the lens of cost-to-serve, not just top-line revenue. Look at how much it truly costs financially and operationally to sell, fulfill, and support each SKU, campaign, or initiative. Then reallocate resources toward the highest-return efforts.

Smart Supply Chain Moves to Reduce Tariff Risk

For brands that rely heavily on imports, especially from countries like China, adapting your supply chain isn’t just smart—it’s survival.

Here are a few of the key strategies resilient brands use to reduce risk and improve operational efficiency:

• Diversify your sourcing: If your supplier network is concentrated in tariff-heavy countries, it’s time to explore alternatives. Consider sourcing from Southeast Asia, Latin America, or even domestic manufacturers to reduce exposure to unpredictable policy shifts.
• Use U.S.-based 3PLs or bonded warehouses: Local warehousing shortens delivery times and lowers costs associated with last-mile fulfillment. Bonded warehouses, in particular, allow imported goods to be stored without immediate duty payment, improving cash flow and flexibility.
• Be transparent with customers: Cost pressures and fulfillment challenges are a reality in ecommerce. Brands that proactively communicate about shipping timelines, price adjustments, or product availability maintain credibility—and often build deeper loyalty by reinforcing trust.

Brands that invest in flexible logistics, especially in a world of rising trade friction, are better positioned to protect margins, meet delivery expectations, and stay competitive. Whether it’s rerouting freight, relocating inventory, or renegotiating vendor terms, strategic supply chain decisions help build the operational stability needed for long-term growth.

Lessons from Brands That Thrived in Downturns

Economic slowdowns are pressure tests, and some brands not only survive them, they use them to build lasting advantages. 

The common thread? They don’t wait to react. 

They make strategic moves early and lean into what’s working. Here are a few examples of brands that navigated past downturns with focus and flexibility:

Wayfair

Faced with rising inflation, cautious consumers, and excess inventory in the post-pandemic slowdown, Wayfair doubled down on structured promotional strategies to maintain momentum. 

Rather than blanket discounting, which can erode brand equity, they launched Daily Sales, a curated and time-limited selection of deals that created urgency while preserving perceived value.

The tactic worked: repeat visits and conversions increased as shoppers returned regularly to browse fresh deals. This strategy mirrored the success of Way Day—Wayfair’s answer to Amazon Prime Day, which has become a cornerstone of their marketing calendar.

Despite broader macro headwinds, Wayfair delivered over 40 million orders in 2024 with an average order value of $300, up from $292 the previous year. With 22 million active buyers and 56.7% of orders coming from mobile app users, Wayfair’s ability to drive recurring engagement through strategic pricing events became a key lever for navigating the downturn.

Full Leaf Tea Company

With packaging costs and ingredient prices fluctuating, the brand pre-contracted raw materials well in advance, locking in favorable rates.

By forecasting demand and securing inventory early, they protected margins and avoided stockouts—turning operational foresight into a competitive advantage.

Emerging brands on TikTok

Instead of competing in saturated paid social channels, many DTC brands have scaled by leaning into creator partnerships and performance-led content on TikTok.

• CeraVe generated $30.1M in Earned Media Value (EMV) and grew its influencer network by 120% YoY by leaning into TikTok creators like Hyram Yarbro, whose posts alone drove $2.4M in EMV. The brand’s rise was fueled by authentic, long-term partnerships, not paid ads.
• Glow Recipe saw a +600% spike in daily sales and sitewide revenue that surpassed their Black Friday numbers after two of their products went viral on TikTok. By integrating TikTok Shopping with Shopify, they made their videos shoppable and converted first-time viewers into buyers—90% of traffic from TikTok was from new customers.
• Doe Lashes grew into a $15M DTC beauty brand in just one year by focusing on low-cost, high-return marketing, especially micro-influencer outreach. Without paid ads, the brand hit $2.6K in daily sales within its first month through organic TikTok content and affiliate seeding. Their influencer-driven launch strategy was so cost-efficient that one sale per gifted product covered costs.

What’s important here isn’t just the outcomes—it’s the decisions that led to them:

• Anticipating friction before it hits
• Adapting channels and creative to match where attention is going
• Treating constraints as launchpads for smarter strategies

The best playbooks are written by brands that made bold, clear moves when others hesitated. Use their lessons as fuel, not just case studies.

The Moves That Help Brands Thrive When the Economy Slows

Economic slowdowns don’t just challenge growth; they reveal who’s truly built to last. While it’s tempting to cut costs, pivot wildly, or go dark to preserve cash, most brands don’t fail because of external conditions—they stumble due to internal missteps.

Common traps—like slashing marketing, changing strategy without data, or staying silent with customers—erode the very foundations of resilience. Visibility drops. Trust fades. Cash flow tightens. And by the time the dust settles, competitors who stayed steady are already steps ahead.

The strongest brands take the opposite approach. They don’t just survive economic slowdowns—they use them as reset points.

They:

• Stay present and useful in the channels that matter
• Rely on data (not gut instinct) to guide strategic pivots
• Actively manage unit economics, watching LTV/CAC like a hawk
• Communicate clearly and frequently, especially when things get hard
• Double down on fundamentals—customer experience, operational efficiency, and flexible go-to-market strategies

Downturns are part of the cycle. What separates leaders from laggards is how they respond under pressure.

This isn’t about perfection—it’s about precision. The brands that win in economic slowdowns are the ones that keep their footing when others flinch, using constraint to clarify what matters and build smarter, stronger, more agile operations.

They’re not waiting for “normal” to return. They’re redefining what strength looks like—and building momentum for whatever comes next.

About the Author: As the Director, Marketing at adQuadrant, Nick Grant leverages more than 20 years of experience working across a variety of tech verticals. Nick grew up in California and earned his BS in Business with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. After college, he relocated to Seattle to pursue his passion for startups, where he worked at various dot-coms before co-founding a successful visual strategy agency in 2010. Now back in California, Nick spends his time hiking around San Luis Obispo County with his wife and son, honing his talent as a concert photographer, and perfecting his handstand skills.