Brand Ripple
Brand Incubator · Stage 01 · Live
01 Viability Gate

Stress test
before you invest.

Before you name it, design it, or build a single ad, prove the numbers can carry the cost of advertising and still pay you. Set your inputs on the left. Read the verdict on the right. If it does not pass, fix the price or the cost, not the brand.

Quick start
01 Set up your numbers
What are you selling Switches the labels below
Cost to make one unit, all in Materials, packaging, shipping, fees
Selling price What the customer pays you
Hours per client Time you actually spend delivering
Payment processing fees Stripe, Square, Shopify Payments, PayPal
3% of revenue
0% 10%
Returns and refunds Share of orders refunded
5% of revenue
0% 25%
Ad spend target Share of revenue you plan to reinvest
30% of revenue
5% 60%
Profit margin goal What you want left after costs and ads
30% of revenue
30%+ recommended
10% 60%
02 Per sale, where the money goes
Selling price
$0.00
Cost to make
$0.00
Gross margin What you keep before ads and profit
$0.00 0%
Payment fees
$0.00
Returns and refunds
$0.00
Ad budget
$0.00
Profit goal
$0.00
Headroom left
$0.00 0% of price
In ad language at 30% ad spend
Break-even ROAS 0.0x revenue per ad dollar to not lose money on ads alone
Max CAC you can afford $0 most you can pay to acquire one buyer at this ad target
Effective per hour at 2 hrs per client
What client pays / hr $0
Cost to deliver / hr $0
Gross margin / hr $0
Headroom / hr $0
Verdict
Set your numbers to see the verdict.
Enter a cost and a price, then choose how much you plan to spend on ads and what profit margin you want to walk away with. The model does the rest.
03 Why this matters

A candle sells for $20 and costs $5 to make, so the gross margin is $15. A 30% ad spend takes $6. A 30% profit goal takes another $6. Then payment fees take roughly $0.60 and a 5% refund rate eats another $1. That leaves about $1.40 for the second touch a cold buyer almost always needs before they convert, plus the breakages and surprises no spreadsheet predicts. A buck forty is not a business, it is a coin flip. Move the price to $29, or get the cost to $3, and the same idea has real room to advertise, absorb surprises, and scale. The brand cannot fix the maths. Fix the maths first.