What 82 Factors Actually Check

Nine dimensions, not seven

The long list runs A to I: Economic Substance (15 factors), Demand & Market (12), Product Substance (13), Marketing & Creative Potential (10), Logistics & Fulfillment (10), Supply Chain & Sourcing (6), Competition & Defensibility (7), Strategic Fit & Risk (4), and Traction & Scale (5). Eighty-two in total.

Eighty-two questions is too many to ask a human. So the long list is consolidated into a 23-row shortlist, each row folding several underlying factors into one judgement with a published red / yellow / green threshold. Gross margin, price multiple and landed cost ratio collapse into one line about margin. Four contribution-margin factors collapse into one line about CAC headroom.

The blocks are not equal

The 23 rows sit in five blocks, and averaging them would destroy the point.

Economic Engine — margin, absolute profit per order, price point, CAC headroom. Near-knockout. Two red fields here and the rest does not matter.

Demand Foundation — is the pain real, is it big, do they come back, and is there proof anyone has paid?

Product Substance — Cooper’s number-one predictor of new-product success, relative advantage, plus Rogers’ adoption attributes.

Creative & Channel Fitness — the DTC amplifier. Green here lowers realised acquisition cost and retroactively lifts the economics.

Operations & Defense — what happens to the margin after the sale, and how long the edge survives being copied.

A product that is spectacular in four blocks and red in the Economic Engine does not score “good on balance.” It stops.

Live research, not a questionnaire

Thirteen questions go to the applicant. Everything else we find ourselves — market data, trend trajectory, competitive presence, the public record on the company. Claims arrive from the applicant; evidence arrives from outside them. Where the two disagree, evidence wins, and an unevidenced claim is capped rather than rewarded.

The cautions we print rather than hide

Benchmarks are US-heavy and we say so in the instructions. Germany’s return rate runs near 44%, so the return-risk threshold tightens considerably in DACH. Category variance beats averages — 48% gross margin is solid for food and warning territory for beauty. And pre-launch, verifiable traction outweighs eloquent projection every time the two conflict.

A framework that hides its own error bars is a sales tool. This one is a decision tool, so the error bars are in it.

A human signs it

Code does the arithmetic; a reviewer makes the call and puts their name on it, within three business days. The score is the argument. It is not the verdict.

The block that stops the most products is the first one: the margin math that kills most DTC products.