Jimmy KimCEO & Founder, Commerce Roundtable · Marketer of 17+ Years, 4x Founder. Former DTC/Retailer & SaaS Founder. Newsletter. Host of ASOM & Send it! Podcast. DTC Event: Commerce Roundtable

A buyer isn’t a customer. Loyalty is still unproven.

3 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this monologue, Jimmy Kim challenges the common practice among direct‑to‑consumer (D2C) brands of celebrating the "new customer" metric. He argues that what brands label as a new customer is merely a first‑time buyer—a one‑off transaction without any built‑in loyalty or habit. Because most first‑time buyers never return, highlighting acquisition numbers in isolation glorifies the most fragile and least valuable relationship a brand can have. Kim emphasizes that celebrating new‑customer counts distracts from the more critical metrics of retention, repeat purchase, and lifetime value, which truly drive sustainable growth.

Chapters

I want to open with a number that most brands are pretty proud of, and I think it's the wrong number to be proud of. That thing is called the new customer. The reality with every brand is that everybody celebrates the whole new customer account. It's on the dashboard, it's in the Slack messages when everyone gets really excited because they had a record acquisition month. But the problem with this is very simple. First-time customer, and I say it isn't really a customer, it's really just a buyer. It's someone who's willing to give you a chance. That's it. They want to try you one time and there's usually no loyalty behind it. There's no habit built behind it. And statistically, as we know in D2C, most of them are never coming back. When you celebrate the number in isolation, you're celebrating the most like fragile number in the business, the least valuable version of the relationship you'll ever have with what you consider a customer.