FRACTIONAL MARKETING & OPERATIONS DEPARTMENT
Your marketing department. Without the overhead.
Third Culture Lab gives growing DTC and consumer brands senior strategy and execution across creative, performance, retention, marketing operations and systems — working as one team, without having to build and manage the department in-house.
No pitch deck. We look at your numbers together.
Built to work with brands across North America · Europe · Asia-Pacific
Avg monthly revenue in 6 months — DTC food brand
Email revenue, ~60% automated
Cost per lead in 2 months — ads taken in-house
Closed deals from 2,665 leads — tracked to CRM truth
01 — THE WALL
Most growing brands hit the same wall.
You need senior marketing leadership, creative that actually ships, and someone to fix the systems and operations behind the growth. But building all of that in-house means hiring across several different skill sets. So the work gets split across freelancers, agencies and spreadsheets; nobody owns the whole picture, and the things that make growth compound — retention, attribution, creative systems, discoverability and the operational backend — get neglected.
The fix isn’t another freelancer or “more ads.” It’s one accountable department where strategy, creative, performance, operations and systems work from the same priorities and answer to the same number: revenue.
02 — THE WORK
DTC · PREMIUM FOOD
A premium food brand
From one-channel store to compounding growth engine
TCL brought the strategy and the execution. We helped run stronger campaigns, improve retention, clean up attribution, and build a more consistent growth engine across the business. From April 2025 onward, revenue ran well ahead of the same months a year earlier while better lifecycle marketing, measurement and backend systems made growth more repeatable.
Endpoints actual: 2025 beat 2024 in all twelve months. From April 2025, when TCL came in, revenue ran 74% ahead of the same months a year earlier, and 2026 to date is running a further 68% ahead of 2025.
“TCL brought the strategy and the execution. They helped us run better campaigns, strengthen retention, clean up attribution, and turn marketing into a much more consistent growth engine.”
Emil
General Manager, TenderBites
B2B · PRINT & DOCUMENT SOLUTIONS
A print and document solutions brand
Brought ads in-house. Cut cost per conversation 41%.
We brought Meta ads in-house, rebuilt CRM attribution, and established a faster creative testing rhythm. Cost per conversation fell 41%, CPM dropped 53%, and July reached 813 conversations at ₱27 each. The result was cleaner measurement, faster iteration and much stronger control over paid growth.
Endpoints actual: the previous agency averaged 279 conversations a month at ₱45 each. July ran 813 conversations at ₱27. Ads moved in-house in May.
“Bringing ads in-house gave us better visibility, faster iteration and much more control over performance. The work became more measurable, more efficient and easier to scale.”
InterMatrix
IN-HOUSE · FOUNDER'S OWN BRAND
Before we ran growth for anyone else, we built our own.
What started as a side hustle on Amazon became the proving ground for how we operate today. Across candles, wax seals and travel accessories, we scaled Minimale Collective to nearly seven figures in sales within three years, expanded across three marketplaces, and learned firsthand what actually drives ecommerce growth — creative, pricing, retention, inventory and operations. It was our own cash, our own inventory and our own mistakes, and it became part of the operating playbook behind TCL.
6.5x
IN ONE YEAR
4.5★
650+ CUSTOMER REVIEWS
IN SALES · WITHIN 3 YEARS
3
MARKETPLACES
FEATURED & RECOGNIZED BY
COSMOPOLITAN
First pick of 30 third-anniversary leather gifts
“This travel jewelry case is the perfect companion...”
Also recognized by Grit Daily (#2 candle-making kit), New Hobby Box (“Most Professional Kit”), and The Bridal Box (“Best Long-Lasting”).
03 — THE DEPARTMENT
A department you don’t have to build.
You get the functions of a real marketing and growth operations department, without assembling and managing the headcount yourself.
Strategy
Led by Mik · Founder — CMO-level direction across positioning, channel strategy, growth priorities and the roadmap.
Creative
Ads, email, organic social and creator content shipped consistently and tested systematically — not based on taste.
Operations
The systems behind execution — campaign operations, reporting, workflow design, CRM processes and custom tools that replace manual work and keep the business moving.
Systems & AI
Automation, attribution infrastructure, data workflows and AI-enabled systems that help the team move faster, make better decisions and scale without unnecessary complexity.
Specialists join where the work calls for them.
One department. One operating rhythm.
Strategy, creative, operations and systems work from the same priorities, numbers and weekly cadence. No managing multiple vendors. No chasing handoffs. No wondering who owns the next step.
Four growth systems.
One operating model.
01 · Retention & lifecycle email
Lifecycle email that turns one-time buyers into repeat revenue — one of the highest-margin growth channels most brands underuse.
02 · Honest attribution
CRM truth over platform vanity. Know which channels and campaigns are actually creating revenue.
03 · Performance marketing
Paid social, influencer programs and UGC creative, tested systematically and judged on business outcomes — not ROAS theater.
04 · AI-era discovery (SEO/GEO)
Be the brand people — and AI — can find and recommend: technical SEO, schema, reviews and content built for how discovery works now.
What working with us looks like
Week 1 · Growth audit
We go through your numbers together: channels, retention, attribution. You leave with a clear map, whether or not we work together.
Months 1–2 · The department installs
We fix measurement first, then attack the highest-leverage constraint — retention, creative, paid media or operations — based on what the data says. One priority at a time, shipped weekly.
Month 3+ · Compounding
A consistent operating rhythm: what shipped, what it returned, what we learned and what happens next. Decisions tied back to revenue, not activity reports.
04 — ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Hi, I’m Mik.
I started my career in multinational FMCG in Vancouver, then came up through Amazon FBA and went on to build and scale eCommerce across Asia, the US and Europe. Over the last decade, I kept seeing the same pattern: brands invest heavily in acquisition while the systems that make growth compound — retention, clean attribution, stronger creative and the operational backend — get neglected.
So I built the department I kept wishing brands had: senior strategy, dedicated creative and operations, specialists where needed, and systems that help us move faster — without asking the client to build and manage the entire team themselves.
Frequently asked questions
What does Third Culture Lab do?
Who actually does the work?
Who is it for?
How is this different from an agency?
What does it cost?
Do I need to build an in-house marketing team?
Let’s look at your numbers.
30 minutes. Your dashboards, our questions. You’ll leave with at least one thing to fix, whether or not we ever work together.
Prefer email? mikhail@thirdculturelab.com