DLP Tactical — tactical gear, helmets and helmet systems
Six percent of the catalog delivered 76% of the growth
Family-run maker of helmets, helmet accessories, plate carriers, vests and apparel for airsoft and milsim players, hunters, range users and first responders. Engaged March 2025. Full catalog restructure, listing and content rebuild, A+ and Brand Story, storefront, advertising management.
Conversion rate up 56%
Orders up 87% on 21% more traffic
ROAS up 46% on flat spend
The situation.
They had a real problem that looked like a different problem. Most brands in their position assume they need more traffic. DLP already had it. Over six hundred live child ASINs were pulling roughly fourteen thousand sessions a month, and their click-through rate ran at nearly twice the category rate.
Then almost nobody bought. Conversion sat at 1.7 percent, flat against the market despite that click advantage. That is not a keyword problem. That is a brand earning attention it cannot convert.
What we found.
- One A+ content module running across the entire catalog, and it was the wrong one — helmet accessory listings showing photos of jackets, pants and belts
- Duplicate ASINs on two of their best products, splitting reviews and search authority
- A helmet line pulling significant traffic into detail pages converting under one percent, priced well above the category median
- Non-ballistic products matching into ballistic and body armor search demand — burning ad spend and creating compliance exposure
- The accessory line, which converted better than anything else they sold, was the least invested part of the business — no storefront, no Brand Story, no A+ worth the name
What we did.
The first pass was fast and broad. Structure and keyword work across the catalog to stop the obvious bleeding. Nothing fancy. It bought us information and it bought them stability.
Then we did the harder thing, which was to stop.
Spreading effort evenly across six hundred ASINs is how agencies look busy. We picked ten listings, took them apart, and rebuilt them properly. New copy, new image sets, new A+ modules built for the actual product, a Brand Story, and a storefront where none had existed. Ten listings. Six percent of the catalog.
What happened.
Account-wide, comparing the same six-month window year over year:
- Conversion rate up 56 percent
- Orders up 87 percent, units up 88 percent
- Sessions up 21 percent
Read those together. Order growth ran more than four times session growth. This was not a traffic story. Roughly three quarters of the gain came from converting the traffic they already had.
The helmet accessory line, the part of the catalog that had been ignored, doubled. Its conversion rate went from 4.4 to 6.9 percent.
Amazon's own Brand Analytics tells the same story from a completely separate dataset. New-to-brand customers grew 134 percent. Detail page to cart-add improved from 14.2 to 18.1 percent. Cart-add to purchase improved from 30.1 to 37.4 percent. Every stage of the funnel got better, and the improvements compounded.
Advertising got more efficient at the same time. Return on ad spend improved 46 percent and ACOS came down by a third, on essentially flat monthly spend.
The proof.
Here is the part we like most, because it is the part most agencies cannot show.
Those ten rebuilt listings were the worst-converting part of DLP's catalog. Not by a little. For sixteen consecutive months they converted at roughly 0.64 times the rate of everything else in the account. After the rebuild, they crossed over. They have now converted above the rest of the catalog for eight consecutive months, peaking at 1.4 times the rate of the untouched listings.
Six percent of the catalog delivered 76 percent of the growth.
And the detail that closes the argument: those ten listings received less traffic growth than the listings we did not touch. Their conversion nearly doubled anyway. When the treated group moves and the control group does not, and the treated group had the traffic disadvantage, there is no other explanation available. It was the work.
Where it goes next.
Growth is not finished here and we are direct with DLP about what is still broken. The helmet line still converts at roughly one percent on substantial traffic, and the cause is price positioning, not content. That is a business conversation, not a listing conversation, and we are having it.
Fewer than five percent of DLP's customers buy from them twice. For a brand selling a modular system where a single customer should reasonably own a helmet, side rails, a mount, a counterweight and a suspension system, that is the largest single opportunity in the account. Those are next year's problems. We would rather name them than pretend the job is done.
Why this engagement worked.
Most Amazon agencies would have looked at DLP's numbers and sold them more advertising. The traffic was already there. Spending more to buy additional visits to listings that converted at 1.7 percent would have produced a bigger invoice and a worse business. We told them the opposite. Slow down, touch fewer listings, do them properly.
That is easier to say when the owners are the ones doing the work. DLP has never had an account rep. They talk to the people making the decisions, which is how we run every account, and it is why our clients stay with us for years rather than quarters.
"Barrel Aged has been managing our Amazon account for about a year, and we've been very impressed with the results. Since working with them, our Amazon revenue has increased by more than 50% on an established store and brand. They've improved our listings, helped with product selection and branding, and created more efficient advertising campaigns. We also love working with another small business based in the U.S. and would highly recommend Barrel Aged to anyone looking to grow their Amazon business."