About the author

Mareike Niedermeier

Founder and CEO of Sales Savvy Online. Creator of Survivable Distance, a theory of ecommerce viability.

I write about the part of ecommerce nobody prices: the journey from what a store makes now to what it needs to make. Everything I publish comes from our client work and our own numbers. Not from the internet.

Mareike on LinkedIn [email protected]

Experience

The experience behind the advice

Mareike founded Sales Savvy Online in Sydney in 2019. She is a three-time ecommerce founder and a former executive, and she still sets the strategy on every client account.

Since 2019 her team has worked with more than 200 ecommerce brands, from founders who had not sold anything yet to brands doing $5M+ a year. The work covers the whole system: strategy and unit economics, websites and conversion, paid media, email and retention.

She writes the method down so it can be checked. The Validation Sprint, the DIY AI Toolkit and every article on this site all start from the same place: can the business afford the customers it is trying to buy?

I left school early and was homeless at 16. I learnt business by building them, and I know what bad advice costs because I have paid for it. So every recommendation we make comes with the numbers behind it.

Mareike Niedermeier

ecommerce brands partnered with: 200+
in ad spend managed across Meta, Google and TikTok: $5M+
recovered from abandoned carts: $3M+
ad creatives optimised: 5,000+

Cumulative across all Sales Savvy Online clients since 2019. Not a promise about what your business will do.

Methodology

Survivable Distance

Every business has a distance to travel, from what it makes now to what it needs to make. The destination is the easy part. The journey is where businesses die: stock ordered in January, paid for in February, sold through June. Survivable Distance asks whether a business can cross that gap without running out of cash on the way.

It is why a Validation Sprint checks whether the business can afford a customer before anyone touches the ads.

Law 01
Scale multiplies

More spend has to be paid for by more contribution, and by a cash path the business can fund.
Law 02
The Product Tax

The avoidable cost of a product or offer that falls short of what customers reasonably expect.
Law 03
There is no good ROAS

Every business needs a return that supports its own costs, cash timing and achievable volume.
Law 04
The Trough

A plan must fund its lowest cash point, not just its profitable destination.
Law 05
You cannot pay a supplier in LTV

Future customer value only helps if the business can finance the wait.

Mareike Niedermeier

Survivable
Distance

A theory of
ecommerce viability

One idea · Five laws

First edition · 96 pages

The book

Survivable Distance: find out if your plan runs out of cash before you do

Most growth plans look fine at the end of the spreadsheet. The trouble is the months in between, when the stock is paid for and the sales have not landed yet. The book follows one example store, month by month, so you can run the same checks on your own numbers before you find out the expensive way. 96 pages.

Download the free digital edition

Evidence