How Guise cut its cost per pre-order customer by 84%

The start-up

Guise needed a way to establish trust while appealing to new customers at a low-cost commitment threshold, as a brand-new brand in a hard-to-reach category.

Guise is a premium skincare and cosmetics store on Shopify for men. The products are vegan, cruelty-free and fragrance-free, and formulated to help men look (and feel) their best.

Pre-orders with a partial payment option presented a clear opportunity to improve buyer confidence in a new product, where other acquisition strategies fell short. High costs and low conversions on Meta ads made it difficult to execute their vision.

The challenge: selling a new product idea to men online

Guise needed a way to capture the interest and commitment of brand-new shoppers discovering their new product: the Green Stick, a color-correcting stick that reduces the appearance of redness from rosacea, rashes, acne, spider veins and sun damage.

For three months, they tried to acquire customers through paid media channels like Meta, at a cost of upwards of $66 per pre-order customer, which was not sustainable. It was clear during that campaign that new customers hesitated to pay full price for a new product from an unestablished brand.

“We knew we wanted to take preorders on our first product. The challenge was getting people to commit to a $35 product from an unestablished brand that they wouldn’t receive for an indefinite amount of time.”

Will Barry, founder of Guise

The solution: pre-orders with a partial payment

Guise set up Timesact to take pre-orders with a $1 payment up front and the $34 balance once the product was ready to ship. The small first step brought in demand for the product while lowering the psychological and financial commitment before it shipped. Will got it set up while working on other parts of the launch.

“At some point, I realized it would be convenient if there were a way to put a $1 to reserve an item to decrease the friction and lower the commitment, rather than making the full $35 purchase upfront.”

Will Barry, founder of Guise

Timesact let him do what he wanted: set up a partial payment so shoppers could commit $1 to his product, with their card details stored by Shopify rather than in the Timesact app. When the Green Stick shipped, his customers paid the $34 balance and Guise sent out their orders.

The pre-order strategy

Guise took a low partial payment while it worked towards the launch, and fulfilled the orders four months later.

1. Partial payment

The first strategy focused on paid advertising for a new product on pre-order that would ship at an undisclosed date several months away. Four months before the first shipment, the team switched to a partial payment strategy using Timesact, which lowered the barrier to entry and built trust with new customers to make the purchase commitment.

“By offering the customers to pay $1 as a deposit to secure the product and pay the remaining $34 upon shipping, we were able to secure more than 95% of the original commitments when fulfilling the products four months later.”

Will Barry, founder of Guise

2. Back in stock

By April 2025, Guise had two high-demand products with new and repeat buyers. The challenge had become keeping them in stock to meet demand.

“We are finally reaching the point where we might have to put the Green Stick on preorder again or offer back-in-stock notifications the next time we run low on inventory.”

Will Barry, founder of Guise

Using partial payments to build buyer confidence

After moving to partial payments on pre-orders, the Guise team saw that paid advertising alone was not enough to sell a pre-order. High acquisition costs, and asking buyers to trust a product that would ship months later, made full-price pre-orders a hard sell for first-time customers, who usually needed more time to get to know the brand before paying full price.

The results: an 84% drop in cost per acquisition

While still early in its growth, Guise saw clear results. Partial payments on pre-orders built buyer confidence and confirmed customer interest, and the cost per pre-order customer fell from upwards of $66 to $10.14.

The team also found that back-in-stock notifications will be useful when demand runs ahead of stock.