ABOUT THE BRAND
Type One Style sets the global standard for diabetes device protection
Who says diabetes devices can’t be safe and stylish?
Type One Style turned a personal challenge into a global solution. Founder, Charlie Cawsey, saw a gap in the market when when his wife Emma would lose her monitoring device, inspiring her to search for something to secure her device. But the options available just weren’t good enough.
Together they developed stylish and protective patches for continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps. These patches help protect various diabetes monitors and pumps while adding fun prints that allow wearers to show off their personalities. This innovative idea turned into the thriving company Type One Style.
The small but mighty company grew from a $6k startup loan to selling over 1 million units of product with the help of its Tapcart app. Their top success strategy? Marketing efficiency.
We spoke with Charlie, the Co-founder and Managing Director, about selling a niche product to a niche market and the challenges he’s faced as a single-person team.
THE CHALLENGE
Navigating a niche market with no margin for error
While Type One Style may have the most fashionable patches on the market, it’s pretty niche. Only a small percentage of people have Type 1 diabetes, and an even smaller subset use devices like insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors (CGM). That means Charlie has to run an extremely efficient marketing strategy to keep cash flow positive.
With such a small margin for error, Charlie couldn’t afford to invest upfront in hopes of converting customers down the funnel. He needed a marketing strategy with a quick ROI turnaround — something businesses of all sizes can appreciate.
Even paid media agencies didn’t think it’d be worth the effort for Type One Style, saying paid marketing campaigns felt impossible on a small scale with a small niche. With an average order value of 10 to 20 pounds (~12–25 USD), it felt too tight to scale.
Charlie recognized the potential of a mobile app for his brand. Type One Style has an 80% female audience, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Plus, the audience was mostly acquired through social media, so he knew they were adept at mobile and would appreciate an elevated experience.
Plus, he couldn’t deny: “This is just the way the world is going.”
THE SOLUTION
Getting a fast ROI with a streamlined user experience
Charlie knew he needed a return on his app investment within a month—and he got it with Tapcart.
Charlie saw the revenue potential of driving customers to the app. Instead of attempting to drive customers to the website to make a purchase (and potentially lose them along the way), he spends a portion of his marketing dollars driving his audience to the mobile app. He also uses QR codes in mailers, events, and product packaging to drive even more app downloads.
“We know app users are so good on every single KPI. Quite often, the call to action for a marketing campaign isn’t always ‘place an order.’ It’s an app install. We know the conversion rate will be near 11% on the app.”
Charlie Cawsey, Founder and Manager Director
Charlie also took advantage of the Klaviyo integration, souping up their marketing with automated and targeted push notifications based on customers’ actions and locations. It’s about hitting the right customer with the right message at the right time.
If Type One Style’s customers aren’t opening their emails, the next tactic is to send app users a push notification. This method is helping with the brand’s marketing efficiency rate (MER). They’re not sending emails that aren’t working to a dead list.
Sending push notifications also makes it easier to prompt immediate sales. Charlie knows that going through Google with a retargeting pixel isn’t the best way to stand out online.
“Think of how many retargeting pixels that person is in,” said Charlie. “Your strategy is to go through Safari and try to get them to your website? Google can only serve 4 out of 100 brands targeting at the same time.”
An app gives Type One Style customers a shorter path to purchase, with far fewer distractions.
“If you put customers into the app, they’re not going through this retargeting gauntlet. They’re not typically going from idea to your web page. They’re going from idea to a search results page to a sponsored link from a competitor, to wherever they want, and that generally takes a lot longer."
Charlie Cawsey, Founder and Manager Director
That shorter path to purchase is also Charlie’s answer to the common cannibalization problem. While it’s easy to think an app shuffles the same group of customers around, Charlie knows it is the fastest way to direct current and net new customers from engagement to sales. They don’t have to run the “retargeting gauntlet,” as he calls it.
THE RESULTS
Capitalizing on marketing efficiency
After launching the app in 2022, Type One Style had a 4x ROI in just three days. Now? The app has a 9x ROI.
The numbers were so good, Charlie thought there were errors in the data (he actually spent 12 hours trying to find errors in the data — it was very much a "hold the phone, what is this ROI sorcery" moment).
So what's made them so successful?
- The audience: As anticipated, the mostly young female audience took to the app quickly, with little convincing.
- A well-designed app: The app’s simple interface makes it easy to navigate—so easy that the internal team prefers it for looking up products.
- Mobile app best practices: He used the best practices suggested by the Tapcart team, including a banner on the website, a 10% off incentive, QR codes, and more.
- Retargeting strategy: As mentioned above, Charlie uses Klaviyo to reactivate customers who’ve stopped engaging with emails.
From Charlie’s experience, customers need to be constantly reminded about something before they take action. While it feels excessive, he has customers who’ve placed six orders not realize there’s a loyalty program (which is mentioned in the checkout process of every purchase). So he makes sure to place the QR code and app messaging everywhere.
Driving to the app is working for Type One Style. With a 42% higher average order value ($6 more) and a 154% higher conversion rate than the website, it just makes sense.
Besides these KPI improvements, marketing efficiency increased exponentially for Type One Style. Charlie quickly realized he could run ads to the mobile app at a 30% higher cost than ads driving to the web. He estimates they’d have to spend $20K in ad fees to get the same results.
“You’ll also see cost efficiency in your marketing budget, and you’ll pay less to acquire those customers,” he said. “They’ll not have to go through third-party platforms that are trimming something off your bottom line.”
The app facilitated a direct line to sales, bypassing potential distractions and delivering a superior shopping experience. Charlie described this strategy as the "holy trinity" of traffic protection, ease of shopping, and increased frequency and amount of spending.
“Your customer journey is a product as well. Customers have to buy into your site, including the layout, branding, and design experience, before they buy into your checkout. You could have the best product in the world, but if you're on some ancient Microsoft Paint website, no one will buy from you. You want a nice, sleek app that doesn't need any work out of the box. Then, your brand credibility goes through the roof. That's probably one of the driving factors of why we have an 11% conversion rate.”
Charlie Cawsey, Founder and Manager Director
Directing customers to the app instead of the website keeps customers from getting distracted, plus they’re getting a better experience.
“That’s what marketing efficiency is all about,” he said.
How push notifications help the brand through challenging times
2023 brought unforeseen challenges. A mix of tax bills, staffing issues, and shipping disruptions left the company with unexpected financial strain. Yet, the app proved to be a lifeline. Free push notifications played a crucial role in maintaining customer engagement without the hefty cost of ads. They have become their go-to tool for everything from branding to community building.
“The only way to get out of that is to perfect every KPI and push for as much profit or revenue as possible,” said Charlie. It's very easy to double the ad spend, acquire twice as many customers, and get paid back in a couple of months. But that's not affordable.”
Their highest-performing push notification had no CTA—just a knock-knock joke. It drove engagement to the app organically, even without a strong call to action.
SMS marketing, often a staple in US digital strategies, finds little favor in the UK market. While Charlie tested SMS campaigns for Type One Style, he never grew past a .1% return rate. He turned off SMS messages completely and now relies solely on push notifications — making them even more critical to their approach.
What’s next for Type One Style?
The mobile app is consistently higher month-on-month in LTV, with only a basic time investment from Type One Style. Charlie plans to dedicate more time to the app, invest in custom blocks, add more integrations, and customize the overall functionality.
“We ruthlessly scrutinize everything. It’s black and white — Tapcart just comes out on top,” said Charlie. “Tapcart is like infrastructure for us now. It’d be weird not to have it.”
ABOUT THE BRAND
Type One Style sets the global standard for diabetes device protection
Who says diabetes devices can’t be safe and stylish?
Type One Style turned a personal challenge into a global solution. Founder, Charlie Cawsey, saw a gap in the market when when his wife Emma would lose her monitoring device, inspiring her to search for something to secure her device. But the options available just weren’t good enough.
Together they developed stylish and protective patches for continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps. These patches help protect various diabetes monitors and pumps while adding fun prints that allow wearers to show off their personalities. This innovative idea turned into the thriving company Type One Style.
The small but mighty company grew from a $6k startup loan to selling over 1 million units of product with the help of its Tapcart app. Their top success strategy? Marketing efficiency.
We spoke with Charlie, the Co-founder and Managing Director, about selling a niche product to a niche market and the challenges he’s faced as a single-person team.
THE CHALLENGE
Navigating a niche market with no margin for error
While Type One Style may have the most fashionable patches on the market, it’s pretty niche. Only a small percentage of people have Type 1 diabetes, and an even smaller subset use devices like insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors (CGM). That means Charlie has to run an extremely efficient marketing strategy to keep cash flow positive.
With such a small margin for error, Charlie couldn’t afford to invest upfront in hopes of converting customers down the funnel. He needed a marketing strategy with a quick ROI turnaround — something businesses of all sizes can appreciate.
Even paid media agencies didn’t think it’d be worth the effort for Type One Style, saying paid marketing campaigns felt impossible on a small scale with a small niche. With an average order value of 10 to 20 pounds (~12–25 USD), it felt too tight to scale.
Charlie recognized the potential of a mobile app for his brand. Type One Style has an 80% female audience, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Plus, the audience was mostly acquired through social media, so he knew they were adept at mobile and would appreciate an elevated experience.
Plus, he couldn’t deny: “This is just the way the world is going.”
THE SOLUTION
Getting a fast ROI with a streamlined user experience
Charlie knew he needed a return on his app investment within a month—and he got it with Tapcart.
Charlie saw the revenue potential of driving customers to the app. Instead of attempting to drive customers to the website to make a purchase (and potentially lose them along the way), he spends a portion of his marketing dollars driving his audience to the mobile app. He also uses QR codes in mailers, events, and product packaging to drive even more app downloads.
“We know app users are so good on every single KPI. Quite often, the call to action for a marketing campaign isn’t always ‘place an order.’ It’s an app install. We know the conversion rate will be near 11% on the app.”
Charlie Cawsey, Founder and Manager Director
Charlie also took advantage of the Klaviyo integration, souping up their marketing with automated and targeted push notifications based on customers’ actions and locations. It’s about hitting the right customer with the right message at the right time.
If Type One Style’s customers aren’t opening their emails, the next tactic is to send app users a push notification. This method is helping with the brand’s marketing efficiency rate (MER). They’re not sending emails that aren’t working to a dead list.
Sending push notifications also makes it easier to prompt immediate sales. Charlie knows that going through Google with a retargeting pixel isn’t the best way to stand out online.
“Think of how many retargeting pixels that person is in,” said Charlie. “Your strategy is to go through Safari and try to get them to your website? Google can only serve 4 out of 100 brands targeting at the same time.”
An app gives Type One Style customers a shorter path to purchase, with far fewer distractions.
“If you put customers into the app, they’re not going through this retargeting gauntlet. They’re not typically going from idea to your web page. They’re going from idea to a search results page to a sponsored link from a competitor, to wherever they want, and that generally takes a lot longer."
Charlie Cawsey, Founder and Manager Director
That shorter path to purchase is also Charlie’s answer to the common cannibalization problem. While it’s easy to think an app shuffles the same group of customers around, Charlie knows it is the fastest way to direct current and net new customers from engagement to sales. They don’t have to run the “retargeting gauntlet,” as he calls it.
THE RESULTS
Capitalizing on marketing efficiency
After launching the app in 2022, Type One Style had a 4x ROI in just three days. Now? The app has a 9x ROI.
The numbers were so good, Charlie thought there were errors in the data (he actually spent 12 hours trying to find errors in the data — it was very much a "hold the phone, what is this ROI sorcery" moment).
So what's made them so successful?
- The audience: As anticipated, the mostly young female audience took to the app quickly, with little convincing.
- A well-designed app: The app’s simple interface makes it easy to navigate—so easy that the internal team prefers it for looking up products.
- Mobile app best practices: He used the best practices suggested by the Tapcart team, including a banner on the website, a 10% off incentive, QR codes, and more.
- Retargeting strategy: As mentioned above, Charlie uses Klaviyo to reactivate customers who’ve stopped engaging with emails.
From Charlie’s experience, customers need to be constantly reminded about something before they take action. While it feels excessive, he has customers who’ve placed six orders not realize there’s a loyalty program (which is mentioned in the checkout process of every purchase). So he makes sure to place the QR code and app messaging everywhere.
Driving to the app is working for Type One Style. With a 42% higher average order value ($6 more) and a 154% higher conversion rate than the website, it just makes sense.
Besides these KPI improvements, marketing efficiency increased exponentially for Type One Style. Charlie quickly realized he could run ads to the mobile app at a 30% higher cost than ads driving to the web. He estimates they’d have to spend $20K in ad fees to get the same results.
“You’ll also see cost efficiency in your marketing budget, and you’ll pay less to acquire those customers,” he said. “They’ll not have to go through third-party platforms that are trimming something off your bottom line.”
The app facilitated a direct line to sales, bypassing potential distractions and delivering a superior shopping experience. Charlie described this strategy as the "holy trinity" of traffic protection, ease of shopping, and increased frequency and amount of spending.
“Your customer journey is a product as well. Customers have to buy into your site, including the layout, branding, and design experience, before they buy into your checkout. You could have the best product in the world, but if you're on some ancient Microsoft Paint website, no one will buy from you. You want a nice, sleek app that doesn't need any work out of the box. Then, your brand credibility goes through the roof. That's probably one of the driving factors of why we have an 11% conversion rate.”
Charlie Cawsey, Founder and Manager Director
Directing customers to the app instead of the website keeps customers from getting distracted, plus they’re getting a better experience.
“That’s what marketing efficiency is all about,” he said.
How push notifications help the brand through challenging times
2023 brought unforeseen challenges. A mix of tax bills, staffing issues, and shipping disruptions left the company with unexpected financial strain. Yet, the app proved to be a lifeline. Free push notifications played a crucial role in maintaining customer engagement without the hefty cost of ads. They have become their go-to tool for everything from branding to community building.
“The only way to get out of that is to perfect every KPI and push for as much profit or revenue as possible,” said Charlie. It's very easy to double the ad spend, acquire twice as many customers, and get paid back in a couple of months. But that's not affordable.”
Their highest-performing push notification had no CTA—just a knock-knock joke. It drove engagement to the app organically, even without a strong call to action.
SMS marketing, often a staple in US digital strategies, finds little favor in the UK market. While Charlie tested SMS campaigns for Type One Style, he never grew past a .1% return rate. He turned off SMS messages completely and now relies solely on push notifications — making them even more critical to their approach.
What’s next for Type One Style?
The mobile app is consistently higher month-on-month in LTV, with only a basic time investment from Type One Style. Charlie plans to dedicate more time to the app, invest in custom blocks, add more integrations, and customize the overall functionality.
“We ruthlessly scrutinize everything. It’s black and white — Tapcart just comes out on top,” said Charlie. “Tapcart is like infrastructure for us now. It’d be weird not to have it.”
