The Challenge

Code&Quill makes premium notebooks for people who think on paper: designers, developers, writers, and anyone who finds clarity through analog tools. It's also an eCommerce brand Astronaut Party owns and operates, which means we live with its inventory, margin, and cash-flow decisions the same way our clients live with theirs.

At $30-50 per notebook, Code&Quill competes against both cheaper alternatives and the prevailing narrative that "everything should be digital." The earlier marketing approach was feature-driven: paper quality, binding, page layouts. It attracted existing notebook buyers but wasn't growing the market. CPA was climbing as the core audience saturated, and growth required new customers without breaking the unit economics.

The Business Milestone

The milestone was clear and, on the surface, contradictory: grow sales 30%+ while reducing CPA. Working backward from the economics set the constraint: at this price point, CPA needed to stay under $18 for scale to make sense, unless retention data justified paying more for the first purchase.

The Signal, The Decision, The Action

Structured creative testing, 35+ variants per week across Meta and Google with Moonmap tracking every angle, surfaced the decisive signal within the first month: the message that converted wasn't about the product. It was about the practice. "Analog productivity," the idea that writing by hand helps you think better, resonated 4x more than feature-based creative with new audiences.

Senior operators then made the call that changed the trajectory: invest more heavily in top-of-funnel awareness. The purchase data showed Code&Quill's repeat rate was exceptionally high; customers who bought one notebook almost always bought more. That meant first-purchase CPA could run above the simple break-even math, because lifetime value justified it. Email cadence was coordinated with paid touchpoints so the journey from first click to repeat purchase ran as one system.

The Measured Result

• 35% year-over-year sales growth, fueled by new audience discovery and the "analog productivity" message
• 25% CPA reduction, even while expanding to colder audiences
• 40% new customer growth, from buyers who never would have searched for "premium notebooks"

What Came Next

The messaging discovery now anchors Code&Quill's creative strategy, and the retention economics continue to shape how aggressively we buy the first purchase. Because we operate the brand ourselves, every one of these decisions is also evidence for our clients: this is the same operating loop we run on their businesses.