Kitsch Cut Churn in Half and Doubled Subscribers with Skio

Bootstrapped to 9-Figures on Hair Ties and Grit

Kitsch launched in 2010 when founder Cassandra Morales Thurswell started hand-making hair ties in her LA apartment at age 25. What began with door-to-door sales and cold calls turned into $360 million in annual revenue. Female-owned, self-funded, no outside capital: just product and hustle.

The brand built its business on accessible, sustainable beauty essentials that actually worked. Heatless curlers went viral on TikTok and became cult favorites. Shampoo bars turned into Amazon bestsellers. Products landed at Ulta, Target, and thousands of retailers worldwide.

But that wasn’t enough. Kitsch wanted to turn subscriptions into a sustainable growth engine. They hired Cassandra Reed joined as Director of Retention Marketing to help make that goal a reality. 

Recharge Turned Retention Into Daily Firefighting

Kitsch's Recharge setup blocked every retention strategy the team tried to implement. Preventable churn mounted as people who just needed breathing room hit cancel instead.

Portal limitations frustrated subscribers and the retention team in equal measure. Basic account management generated support ticket floods that consumed hours daily. Every retention initiative required engineering workarounds that took weeks to ship, and by the time a test went live, market conditions had already shifted.

Experimentation Moved at Snail’s Pace

The breaking point? Kitsch couldn't experiment fast enough to keep up. 

Testing new retention strategies meant multi-week engineering projects for features that should've been turnkey. The team was forced to operate reactively, putting out fires, manually processing requests that should've been automated, and watching churn climb while they waited for developers.

Cancel flow optimization was challenging. No splash screens, no intelligent save offers tailored to why someone was actually leaving. Every cancellation got identical treatment regardless of whether they were price-sensitive, overflowing with product, or just needed a break.

As acquisition costs climbed, subscriber growth began to slow. 

Monthly Strategy Sessions Built Retention Systems

Skio's approach centered on partnership rather than transactional support. Monthly retention strategy sessions with Sandro, Kitsch's merchant success manager, created dedicated space to analyze performance, identify opportunities, and ship improvements rapidly without waiting on dev cycles.

The adaptive cancel flow became retention infrastructure. Kitsch built reason-based paths that actually addressed why people were leaving: cadence adjustments for subscribers getting too much product, SKU swaps for those wanting variety, targeted discounts for price concerns. Each path solved the specific problem instead of forcing stay-or-cancel decisions that killed retention.

Splash Screens Caught Exit Intent

Splash screens caught cancellation attempts before subscribers even reached the flow. Over 6,000 deflections in the first year proved many people just needed skip or delay options, not full cancellation.

Portal redesign turned the subscriber experience around completely. Smart Upsells with trending badges turned the portal from a management tool into a revenue generator. Clean timelines gave subscribers transparency into upcoming orders. Direct routing to Kitsch's devoted Facebook community boosted engagement beyond transactions.

Payment Recovery Got Smarter

Dunning optimization recovered revenue that would've bled away on Recharge's rigid retry logic. Intelligent retry timing, backup payment collection methods, and strategic retry intervals meant payment recovery became predictable instead of a coin flip every billing cycle.

Implementation moved fast because Skio shipped improvements in days, not quarters. Want to test splash screen messaging? Live in minutes. Need to adjust cancel flow discount thresholds based on AOV? Updated same day.

Support tickets dropped as portal intuition improved. The team redirected hours from reactive support to proactive retention strategy and testing.

Retention Engineering Compounded Monthly

45% churn reduction year-over-year changed subscription economics entirely.

30% growth in active subscriptions despite lighter new signup flow.

79% save rate lift through intelligent cancel flows.

The shift was structural, not cosmetic. 

Kitsch built retention systems that compounded monthly instead of one-off wins that decayed. Better save logic caught more cancellations—22% fewer overall across the subscriber base. Improved dunning recovered more payments, with 18% better recovery rates and a 13% increase in recovered revenue, turning lost revenue into retained subscriptions. Portal enhancements reduced friction that drove support tickets, cutting CX-led cancellations by 21% as subscribers handled changes themselves. 

Each improvement reinforced the others in a flywheel that gained momentum.

Subscriber quality increased alongside retention. Higher average order counts, better lifetime value, more successful upsells on trending products. 

So… What Changed Between 2024 and 2025?

Kitsch stopped reacting and started building. 

Monthly strategy sessions created product familiarity and momentum that quarterly check-ins never achieved. Rapid implementation enabled iteration cycles that turned hunches into data-backed strategies. This deep, partnership-driven approach meant Skio's success was tied directly to Kitsch's retention performance.

The next phase unlocks with Skio's new customer portal, one-time-to-subscription Quick Actions embedded in billing reminders, subscriber milestones that reward loyalty, and enhanced personalization throughout the billing experience. The retention flywheel accelerates as each new layer compounds previous gains instead of replacing them.

The subscription program became what it should be: a revenue engine that scales through retention rather than endless acquisition treadmill that burns cash faster than it builds value.