Dai Nguyen Tuan

I’ve been posting less lately. Not because I lost momentum, but because I wanted to give more of my time and attention to Okiela. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been going back into the product, re-checking small details, re-running tests, and repeating the experience from the perspective of a real user. I kept asking myself a simple question: if I were a Shopify merchant seeing this for the...

I’ve been posting less lately. Not because I lost momentum, but because I wanted to give more of my time and attention to Okiela. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been going back into the product, re-checking small details, re-running tests, and repeating the experience from the perspective of a real user. I kept asking myself a simple question: if I were a Shopify merchant seeing this for the...

"Revenue up, profit down." It’s the defining crisis of 2026 DTC. --------- I’ve seen this script too many times: CMO: "Look at this 3.5x ROAS! We’re crushing it." CFO: "Then why is our cash position lower than last month?" The gap? Attribution tools like Triple Whale show you ROAS, but they don't show you Profit. They miss the duties, the 3PL fees, and the return shipping that quietely destroys...

"Revenue up, profit down." It’s the defining crisis of 2026 DTC. --------- I’ve seen this script too many times: CMO: "Look at this 3.5x ROAS! We’re crushing it." CFO: "Then why is our cash position lower than last month?" The gap? Attribution tools like Triple Whale show you ROAS, but they don't show you Profit. They miss the duties, the 3PL fees, and the return shipping that quietely destroys...

"Revenue is a vanity metric, but profit is the truth." Building Okiela from Vietnam, I saw a gap: Shopify founders are overwhelmed by tools that cost $129+/mo and leak their data. I chose a different path: 1. Privacy-first & Zero integrations. 2. No API connections required. 3. Data stays in your browser (Browser-first). 4. Setup in exactly 30 seconds. Why pay 10x more for features you never...

"Revenue is a vanity metric, but profit is the truth." Building Okiela from Vietnam, I saw a gap: Shopify founders are overwhelmed by tools that cost $129+/mo and leak their data. I chose a different path: 1. Privacy-first & Zero integrations. 2. No API connections required. 3. Data stays in your browser (Browser-first). 4. Setup in exactly 30 seconds. Why pay 10x more for features you never...

$50,000 in Sales. $400 in Bank. Welcome to the "Scaling Trap." --------- Let’s be honest - it’s a hollow feeling. You see the green arrows on Shopify and feel like a boss. But when payroll or the Meta ad bill hits, you’re sweating. Why? Because you’re managing Revenue, not Profit. Your cash is hiding in 3 "Black Holes": 1. The Ghost Profit: Your spreadsheet says you're winning, but it forgot...

Most Shopify merchants celebrate "record-breaking" revenue, only to realize their bank account is empty at the end of the month. The reason? They ignore the 5-Tier Profit Waterfall: 1. Platform & Payment Fees: Shopify, Stripe, and marketplaces like Amazon (15%) or Shopee (6%) take their cut before you even see the money. 2. COD Fees: That 2-3% fee feels small, but it’s a silent killer that eats...

Three questions I always ask Shopify founders - no matter their GMV: 1. What was your net margin over the last 12 months? (Not a feeling. A real number.) 2. What are your top 5 SKUs by profit, not by revenue? 3. If you turned off all discounts for 30 days, would the business still be healthy? If you can’t answer these three clearly… then every new creative and every new channel is just...

Five years ago, running an ecommerce brand was hard. In 2025–2026, it’s a different game: global online sales keep growing, but margins are getting squeezed from every side. A few pieces of the macro picture: Globally, ecommerce is on track for roughly 6–6.5 trillion USD in online sales by 2025, but “good” profit margins are now considered to be in the 10–20% net range in many verticals. Costs...

A founder I know hit $340K revenue last quarter. Best month ever. She screenshot the Shopify dashboard and posted it in our group chat. Everyone congratulated her. Two weeks later she messaged me privately: "I don't understand. The number was real. But I'm looking at my bank account and something doesn't add up." We got on a call. I asked her one question: "Have you ever calculated contribution...

Most Shopify stores don’t die from low revenue. They die from silent margin erosion: Best-sellers losing money after fees + shipping + ads COGS up 10–20% but prices unchanged This is when you need true profit per SKU, not another pretty dashboard. -------- #buildinpublic #analytics #data #shopify #ecommerce #saas #solofounder #okiela #shopifytips #ecommerceprofits #ecomtips #shopifytutorial...

In too many ecommerce P&L reviews, I see the same pattern: GMV looks great, but by the time you walk through each “step” of the cost stack, most of the profit has quietly disappeared. If you redraw it as a simple waterfall, the money journey usually looks like this: 1. GMV – total order value. 2. Minus discounts, vouchers, COD fails → Net Revenue. 3. Minus COGS (actual landed cost, not a guess...

In too many ecommerce P&L reviews, I see the same pattern: GMV looks great, but by the time you walk through each “step” of the cost stack, most of the profit has quietly disappeared. If you redraw it as a simple waterfall, the money journey usually looks like this: 1. GMV – total order value. 2. Minus discounts, vouchers, COD fails → Net Revenue. 3. Minus COGS (actual landed cost, not a guess...

In the previous generation, you’d hear the same advice over and over: “If you sell something, you should know your profit on that thing.” Today, a lot of younger founders are running commerce on 3–4 channels at once: Shopify, marketplaces, TikTok, multiple ad platforms. The pace is crazy. But that old sentence – “profit on each thing” – often gets blurry. I don’t think the “new generation” of...

The US just killed the $800 de minimis exemption. Every package into the US now faces 10–145% duties. No exceptions. What this means for Shopify sellers RIGHT NOW: → Your landed cost just increased 10–50% overnight → Customers are getting surprise duty bills of $20–$50 at the door → Cart abandonment is spiking - buyers blame YOU, not customs → Your margin calculation from 6 months ago is now...

Testing Okiela on a real Shopify store this week. First thing it flagged: a SKU with strong GMV, 28% discount rate, 18% refund rate, and estimated payment fees eating another 3%. Net margin: roughly 4%. Before COGS. The founder knew it was "not their best product". They didn't know it was this close to zero. That's not a data problem. That's a "I was flying blind and the instrument panel just...

Social commerce will hit $2.6 trillion globally in 2026. ​50.6% of US social media users made at least one social purchase last year. Incredible scale. But here's the uncomfortable question nobody asks: Which brands are actually making profit from it? TikTok Shop drives impulse buys. Instagram drives aspiration clicks. Both can destroy your margin if your unit economics are broken underneath....

Social commerce will hit $2.6 trillion globally in 2026. ​50.6% of US social media users made at least one social purchase last year. Incredible scale. But here's the uncomfortable question nobody asks: Which brands are actually making profit from it? TikTok Shop drives impulse buys. Instagram drives aspiration clicks. Both can destroy your margin if your unit economics are broken underneath....

87% of ecom merchants raised prices in 2026 to fight tariffs and inflation. ​ Most survived. Some thrived. A few made a quiet mistake: they raised revenue, but not profit. Higher price tag + same COGS + higher ad spend to justify the new price point = margin stayed flat or got worse. The lesson from every inflationary cycle in history: raising prices only works if your cost structure is honest....