Case Study

Pure Apotheca was founded at home during the pandemic in 2021 by owner Rachel, who sought a creative outlet to combine her passion for crafting organic soaps with her background in pharmaceutical compounding. “I wanted to create something that went beyond the ordinary bar of soap,” Rachel explains. “I envisioned a body care range that was beautifully crafted, nourishing, and perfect for gifting.”

After perfecting their formulas, Pure Apotheca expanded online reaching approximately 50 retail stores across Australia. By September 2022, the business had outgrown its home-based operations, leading to the opening of a brick-and-mortar store in Summer Hill, NSW. The brand has since grown significantly, now offering a curated selection of homewares, gifts, and artisan goods from local Australian makers. They emphasise unique, one-of-a-kind products and seasonal collections for major celebrations like Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day.

Before joining Elevatory in September 2023, Pure Apotheca had been operating its physical store for just over a year. During this time, the business had built an extensive product range, but online sales had yet to take off. Online sales were sporadic and limited, as the focus had been primarily on establishing the storefront and navigating the new challenges that came with running a retail operation.

Rachel recalls "the idea of pivoting, redesigning the website and then really nourishing and growing our online presence again felt like a mammoth task that I knew I could not do alone. I didn't have the time nor expertise in running ads, marketing, SEO and lots of other technical improvements that could be made to upgrade and optimise our website so that it would run in equal performance if not better than our retail physical storefront."

After doing some online research, comparing other similar businesses on the market and reading through their websites, Rachel decided to reach out to The Elevatory.

Website

Rachel came to us with a website that had a lovely aesthetic but needed enhancements to highlight her unique selling proposition and improve user experience and conversion rates. With a detailed UX strategy in hand, Rachel was able to address key issues in the new user journey such as:

• Having a prominent and non-intrusive first order offer
• Having one clear message and call to action
• Displaying her large range in a way the user would find helpful
• Ensuring product pages were robust
• Uncomplicating the shipping proposition
• Ensuring mobile worked and looked as well as or better than desktop

You can see the impact of these website updates made Sep23-Jan24. From monthly visitor numbers of under 500 per month through now to consistent 10,000+ visitor months.

This is also reflected in sales. Pure Apotheca online has gone from doing a couple of hundred dollars of sales per month, extremely sporadically, to regular 5 figure months consistently.And a huge milestone was Christmas 2024 when online purchase revenue matched in-store - effectively doubling Christmas trading figures.

Comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy

Recognising that an optimised website is only one piece of the puzzle, The Elevatory also implemented a comprehensive digital marketing strategy encompassing email marketing, SEO, and paid advertising.

Email Marketing

Rachel has grown her subscriber list from zero in January 2024 to nearly 2,000 today. These subscribers represent a valuable audience that she can engage with regularly through targeted emails and automated campaigns. With each purchase they make at Pure Apotheca, the cost of acquiring these customers continues to decrease, making her marketing efforts more cost-effective over time.

Thanks to the series of automations we implemented to capture the attention of browsing leads and convert them into sales, Pure Apotheca generated over $60k in revenue over the course of 12 months. The best part? These automations work around the clock, driving sales even while you sleep!

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is the process of making various updates to your website to make it more relevant and rank-worthy so you can capture as much organic (free) traffic as possible. Google looks at over 200 things when it determines rank but there are a handful of things we can do to put our best foot forward. At The Elevatory we show our clients how to choose searchable keywords, how to optimise the copy in organic listings, and how to optimise images.

In Rachel’s case, she outsourced this task to coach Jo in May24. When we compare the number of organic visitors in Jan25 (1000+ visitors) with Jan24 – we can see a 100% increase in “free” traffic.

Paid Marketing

Rachel notes: “Since working with the Elevatory ladies, we have a highly performing Google and Meta ads account that drives traffic and sales to our website as well as gaining many new and repeat customers. What is most important to me is that I feel that the website and our online presence is "taken care of", it is not a constant weight on my mind of needing to be continually attended to and that I have an incredible team of women who understand me, our vision for the store, who are driven and look after our online business as if it were their own. They prompt me and think of new things when I don't, they tell me what is working and what isn't, are flexible to pivot and come up with new ideas when needed. I love working with you all, you make my life so much easier! I know you are in my corner and anything I need gets done!”

GOOGLE ADS

In March 2024, Rachel entrusted the management of her Google Ads campaign to coach Jo. Over the next 12 months, this channel generated nearly $60k in revenue, achieving an impressive ROAS of 6x! A standout peak selling period in October, November, and December accounted for more than 50% of the total revenue.

META ADS

After learning Meta Ads herself during her time at The Elevatory, Rachel outsourced this task to coach Caroline and her team.

Recent key milestone events include:

• 6 times ROAS on the Christmas in July2024 campaign
• Doubled Oct24 sales compared to previous year in just 2 weeks!
• 6.5 times ROAS in November’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaign
• 12 times ROAS on the Christmas 2024 campaign. This campaign was so successful that there is no stock to run a Christmas in July campaign in 2025. This is traditionally a big sales period so Rachel will be furiously trying to secure some stock.

 The Future

Rachel says “We have loved getting to know our local community and our regular online customers over the years, as we continue to grow, staying true to our core values of providing excellent customer service, a warm friendly relaxed environment to shop and peruse through and continuing our hunt for the most unique and timeless pieces to add to our ranges. We will be looking to take on a staff member most probably this year and we hope to just keep bringing the same energy, flair and passion for sourcing beautiful things to our community! “

“Since getting to know and working with the rest of the wonderful team, Jo, Caroline and Nicole, I have had nothing but positive experiences with them. They each have a fantastic wealth of knowledge and expertise, no question of mine is too hard and they always action things promptly.” .

“As we have continued to grow, I have handed the reins to the ladies completely, and they now fully manage our ads account and SEO strategy/implementation.”