About the Brand
Masa Chips is a fast-growing snack brand offering tallow-fried tortilla and potato chips — made in-house and proudly sold direct-to-consumer. As a category-defining player in the CPG space, Masa’s success hinges on strong retention and repeat customer behavior.
The Challenge
Before using Segments, Masa Chips was flying blind when it came to understanding true repeat revenue.
Co-founder Steven Rofrano explains:
“Shopify’s repeat revenue metrics are basically useless. You’ll hear someone say, ‘Oh, 45% of my revenue this month was from repeat customers.’ That tells you nothing.”
The default reporting tools lacked depth — showing only surface-level monthly revenue splits, which could mislead more than inform. As Steven put it, “You need to understand cohorted repeat behavior — how a group of first-time customers actually come back and spend over time.”
The team hacked together a monthly Excel report to track this data manually, but it was a slow and painful process. “My co-founder would spend 45 minutes to an hour every month just refreshing the data,” Steven recalls. “And even then, we only got one static view.”
The Solution
Masa Chips adopted Segments to unlock deep cohort analytics — especially around repeat spend (not just headcount). This gave them:
- A precise, real-time view of how each cohort’s spend evolved over time
- The ability to slice data by product, cohort, date range, or campaign
- An always-updated dashboard — no manual refreshes, no Excel gymnastics
Steven emphasizes the value:
“I can now look at our very first cohort — from nearly three years ago — and see they’re still spending money with us. That’s gold. That’s how you justify a CPG business to investors.”
And when Masa realized that their AOVs for returning customers were significantly higher than first-time buyers, they stopped relying on headcount metrics altogether.
“We don’t run a country club. We run a business. I care about dollars, not just people.”
The Results
Having real-time access to cohort-based repeat spend became a turning point in Masa’s growth journey.
- Faster decision-making: They could now monitor campaign efficacy, product quality, and retention patterns in real time.
- Confidence to invest: With visibility into payback periods and LTV, they dramatically increased marketing spend.
- Explosive growth: Masa shifted from modest early growth to consistent 300%+ YoY growth after acting on the data.
“This data gave us the confidence to hit the gas. For our first 16 months, we weren’t really investing in growth. But once we saw how good our repeat metrics were, we knew we could spend more on marketing — and that’s when growth accelerated.”
Why it worked
Beyond the product itself, Steven highlighted the team’s responsiveness as a key differentiator:
“We’d ask for a feature, and you’d actually build it. That almost never happens. And not just that — you made the tool better for everyone.”
For Masa Chips, Segments wasn’t just a data tool. It became a growth unlock.
