How Portland Leather Goods Increased Portfolio Efficiency While Scaling TikTok from 0% to 14% in 7 Months

Portland Leather Goods was founded in 2015 in a Portland garage, when founder Curtis Matsko handcrafted his first leather journal. Today, the brand makes bags, wallets, journals, and backpacks, boasting more than 420,000 five-star reviews and a highly loyal customer base. Portland Leather Goods sells through four primary channels: its DTC site on Shopify, Amazon, retail, and TikTok Shop. This mix is key to understanding this case, because the marketing budget must drive conversions across very different channels simultaneously.

Key takeaways

1. 70% of TikTok-generated revenue comes from ecommerce, retail, and Amazon.
2. 14% increase in the total budget spent on TikTok over 7 months.
3. 8% improvement in portfolio efficiency while scaling TikTok.

The Challenge

As a growing company with ambitious revenue goals, Portland Leather Goods opened brick-and-mortar stores throughout 2025 and faced the challenge of driving rapid growth through effective optimization of its marketing budget. In September 2025, the brand was managing 11 channels with varying profitability profiles and differing impacts across the conversion funnel.

The engine was running, but increasing spending on the wrong channels could cause KPIs to drop due to factors such as audience saturation, among others. Furthermore, the risk of failing to scale properly and maintaining the same budget allocation (even if the budget is larger) would lead to missed opportunities for expansion or market penetration despite aggressive investment at the corporate level.

Therefore, the questions the team faced were:

1. How can we optimize the budget to get the best return on investment without changing the portfolio efficiency?
2. Which channels allow us to continue generating revenue both online and in physical stores at the same time?

The Solution

The standard approach is to cut budgets for channels traditionally associated with brand awareness and increase investment in channels with the highest ROAS, as indicated by the platform's dashboards. At first glance, this seems logical. However, Portland Leather Goods was already familiar with the halo effect thanks to its previous collaboration with Prescient, so the team decided to analyze how multichannel attribution actually worked.

At that time, Prescient AI helped to understand TikTok's true impact and provided the confidence needed to scale up. This was due to valuable data-driven insights into consumer behavior, identified through trend analysis and the correlation of data not only from the account itself but also from internal channel benchmarks. In short, the halo effect was observed and quantified across various channels, and TikTok, in particular, proved to be much more than just a channel for brand awareness or lead generation. Thanks to this halo effect, TikTok drives revenue in direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce, on Amazon, and in retail, not just on TikTok Shop. The MMM model quantified this halo effect clearly enough to make reallocating the budget to TikTok the recommended decision.

With this new overview, Portland Leather Goods decided to commit to the platform and gradually increase its budget. The increase followed Prescient's projections, based on historical data patterns, market trends, and correlations between channels and budget.

In parallel, the team ran a TikTok Shop affiliate blitz in late March: roughly 500 creators recruited to a 7-day push that produced 3,800 videos and drove $1 million in sales within 20 days. The creator content fed the same TikTok algorithm that GMV Max relies on, which is what made scaling paid TikTok to 14% of media budget feasible at that pace. Affiliate and paid engines reinforced each other.

The Results

Revenue improved in the target channels

Thanks to the budget increase and its redistribution across different channels, the efficiency of Portland Leather Goods' portfolio improved by 8%, enabling the organization to continue growing at a steady pace without the losses typically associated with a significant budget shift.

Cross-Channel revenue optimized for Retail, Ecommerce, and Amazon

Looking at the halo effect across the channels that received the largest budget increases, it's clear that TikTok doesn't just drive awareness. It generates revenue across ecommerce, retail, TikTok Shop, and Amazon. A consumer sees a TikTok ad and then makes a purchase on the website or in a store. Even GMV Max (a format optimized for in-app purchases) sends 66% of its revenue to other channels.

Scaled +14% of the total budget spent on TikTok over 7 months

Starting with a low, phased budget to measure the efficiency of the portfolio being built, investment in TikTok grew gradually to reach 13.9% of the total budget in March 2026 (up from 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 9.0% in the first quarter of 2026). GMV Max led the final acceleration, rising from 0.5% in December to 11.8% in March.

Key takeaways: What this means for you

1. Before making any changes to your advertising budget or your marketing channel portfolio, it is essential to understand how each channel influences the conversion funnel, both individually and collectively. You must understand user behavior and take it into account when making decisions.
2. Channels typically considered to be for brand awareness or lead generation may, in fact, be the ones generating the most revenue in your channel portfolio. Just because KPIs appear on the dashboard doesn't mean this information is entirely accurate. TikTok drives demand, and conversion is the next step; it simply can't be measured using conventional methods.
3. An important decision requires expert judgment backed by data. The likelihood that Portland Leather Goods would have lost efficiency in its portfolio despite increasing its budget was higher than it seems. Prescient functions not only as a standalone product that aids in decision-making but also as the expert judgment that helps you make "tough decisions."