Where they started
A Pune store that sources performance footwear and activewear globally and sells at high ticket sizes: single orders on the ledger run from ₹8,999 to ₹32,502 (shared revenue sheet, May 2026). The founder first engaged Monastic Media in October 2025 (invoice, 27 October 2025), but the Meta account was started from nothing on 1 May 2026: ₹192 of spend that day, first recorded order on 13 May. Fee: ₹39,000 a month plus 5% of ad spend (client contract from 1 May 2026; the September 2026 invoice reads "5% of 3,54,781").
What Monastic Media did
- Warmed the account at ₹200 to ₹1,900 a day for the first three weeks and moved to ₹3,000 to ₹4,000 a day only in the last days of May once orders were landing (daily rows, May 2026).
- Scaled to ₹10,000 to ₹16,000 a day through July while holding the month at 8.4x (daily rows, 22–31 July 2026).
- Tracked a net-sales column beside Shopify revenue from July, so targets were set on the lower figure.
- Set written monthly targets with the founder: July ₹3 lakh of spend for ₹20 lakh; August ₹4 lakh for ₹35 lakh (sheet target rows).
- When late-August sales softened, the fix agreed with the founder was creative quality — founder-led branded video instead of low-quality UGC, and correcting cropped story placements (review call, 26 August 2026).
What changed
- Ad spend: ₹41,028 (May 2026) → ₹1,60,283 (June) → ₹3,36,037 (July) → ₹3,63,701 (August).
- Meta-attributed revenue: ₹4,42,265 → ₹13,24,777 → ₹28,37,166 → ₹25,09,609; Meta ROAS 10.8x → 8.3x → 8.4x → 6.9x.
- Shopify revenue ₹30,88,835 in July and ₹28,86,785 in August; net sales ₹29,34,149 and ₹27,14,805.
- Orders: 36 → 96 → 142 → 144. Cost per order ₹1,140 (May) → ₹2,526 (August).
- Best single day: ₹3,64,471 of store revenue on ₹10,073 of spend, 28 July 2026.
- The founder's own caveat on 26 August 2026: daily sales had slipped from "50,000 to 1 lakh per day" to "max 20k" late in the month and the business overall was "break even" after ad spend and running costs; a creative refresh was in hand.
The target, as the client stated it
August 2026: ₹35 lakh of Meta revenue on ₹4 lakh of spend (sheet target row) — not reached: ₹25.1 lakh on ₹3.64 lakh. September: ₹35 lakh on ₹5 lakh — in progress. The founder has set up a US company and plans a US Shopify store next (26 August 2026).
Status: not reached.
The question this answers
"Your retainer is larger than my monthly revenue." Month one: a ₹39,000 fee against ₹4.4 lakh of Meta-attributed sales; month three: the same fee plus 5% of spend against ₹29.3 lakh of net sales.
Sources: the shared monthly revenue sheet, invoices, dated client review calls. Figures are available on request.