club-membership-and-dtc-revenue

name	club-membership-and-dtc-revenue
description	Build the recurring-revenue engine: design club/membership tiers on member lifetime value (shipment value/frequency, benefits), read and reduce churn by cohort, and manage DTC e-commerce. A club member is worth more than a case sold — but churn quietly eats the club.

Club / Membership & DTC Revenue

The club is the craft producer's recurring-revenue engine — predictable, high-margin depletion from a member who's also a brand advocate. But a club with strong sign-ups and quiet churn is a leaky bucket. This skill designs tiers on lifetime value and manages churn as hard as acquisition.

The loop

1. Design tiers on member lifetime value, not one shipment. Shipment value, frequency, and member benefits (allocations, discounts, events, pickup) shape LTV. Traverse the design the club tree in ../../knowledge/craft-beverage-decision-trees.md. Norms are [verify-at-use].
2. Read churn by cohort and shipment. Where members drop (after shipment 1? after a price change? seasonal?) names the driver — usually value/frequency fit, not price alone.
3. Manage the shipment as the retention moment. Each shipment is a chance to retain or lose; curation, communication, and flexibility (skip/swap) reduce churn.
4. Coordinate allocation with production. The club pre-commits volume; hand allocation between club, tasting-room, and wholesale to craft-beverage-operations-lead.
5. Run DTC e-commerce as the always-on channel. The club plus e-commerce is the full-margin DTC base wholesale can't match.

Metrics

Metric	Reads	Note
Club member LTV	avg shipment value × tenure	The design target; [verify-at-use]
Club churn rate	cancels / members / period	The leaky-bucket metric; read by cohort
Sign-up conversion	joins / tasting-room visitors	Feeds the funnel
Shipment fulfillment / skip rate	shipped / due, skips	Flexibility signal
DTC e-commerce contribution	online margin / period	Always-on full-margin demand

Anti-patterns

• Pricing a tier on one shipment's margin instead of member LTV.
• Celebrating sign-ups while churn quietly offsets them.
• Treating the shipment as fulfillment instead of a retention moment.
• Over-committing club allocation past what production can supply (coordinate with the ops lead).

See also

• ../tasting-room-throughput-and-conversion/SKILL.md — the funnel that feeds the club.
• Best practices: ../../best-practices/the-club-is-the-recurring-revenue-engine.md.
• Command: /design-club-tier.