One operator. Five systems.
First Mill is run by the founder who grew a D2C brand past $5m in revenue. Every system we install exists because a business needed it, paid for itself, and kept running.
Built by an operator, not a consultancy bench.
First Mill is run by Mark Apter, who grew a D2C brand past $5m in revenue, and a product operator with roles across L'Oréal, YSL, Giorgio Armani, Kiehl's, Modiface, Moonpig and Tesco.
That mix is the point. Enterprise product discipline, applied at SMB speed: every system First Mill installs was first built to run a real business and paid for itself before it was offered to anyone else. You scope with the person who ships the work, and the systems stay yours.
Driven $5m+ DTC revenue · 7 global brands · Shopify Partner · Sydney, Australia
Built with real businesses and brands you know.
Abandoned-checkout mining, nightly SEO monitoring, conversion audits, AI-visibility tracking. Each system exists because a real store needed it and it proved its worth.
Common questions about the practice
Who actually does the work?
One operator, the founder. Nothing is outsourced or white-labelled. The person you scope with is the person who ships.
Why five systems and not one?
Because a store is one machine. Search brings buyers, conversion closes them, email keeps them, creative feeds acquisition, and foundations make it all run without heroics.
Where are you based?
Sydney, Australia. The practice works with Australian ecommerce businesses, in Australian hours, in plain Australian English. Happy to travel along the east coast of Australia when being in the room helps.
How do engagements start?
With the free AI use-case audit, usually returned within two business days. It tells you what we found and what we would do about it, so any quote is scoped to real work.