Built in Charleston for the operator-led brand.
We started Gild in 2014 because mid-market Shopify brands deserve the same caliber of operator as enterprise — without the bloat, the bait-and-switch, or the agency theater. Eleven years later, that's still the only thing we sell.
No one was running ecommerce the way we wanted to.
Both of us came up running ecommerce inside brands. We knew what it took to actually move the metrics — not just write a deck about them. And we kept watching mid-market founders make the same impossible trade.
Hire a senior in-house team and burn the runway. Or stitch together three agencies — one for ads, one for email, one for the storefront — and lose the months it takes to make any of them ship cohesively.
“We started Gild because mid-market Shopify brands deserve the same caliber of operator as enterprise — without the bloat, the bait-and-switch, or the agency theater.”— SARAH LOVINGOOD + TAYLOR RAINS, FOUNDERS
So we built the third option. One team, fully embedded, accountable to the same P&L line you are. Senior operators, fixed retainer, partner-led every account. We called it a “fractional ecommerce team” before that was language anyone used.
Eleven years and 80+ Shopify brands later, that's still the only thing we sell.
What we built for ourselves first.
No juniors, no account managers fronting the work.
No hourly billing. No media markup. No scope creep.
You get one Slack room and one number to call.
A founder signs off on every roadmap, every quarter.
— Still our only product.
Three things we run on.
Mid-market ecommerce is being run by people who treat it like a side desk. We don't. These are the principles we hire against, organize the team around, and hold every retainer to.
Operators, not account managers.
Every Gild engagement is led by a partner who has carried a P&L. The senior people you meet on the pitch are the senior people who run the work.
One team beats a stitched stack.
Three agencies, three Slacks, three reporting cadences — that's how mid-market growth gets stuck. We replace the stitching with one team running paid, retention, and storefront against one shared roadmap.
Embedded ≠ overhead.
Senior decisions and shipping speed at one fixed retainer. AI-augmented execution where it works, human craft where it matters. Integrated capacity without the headcount.
How an engagement actually runs.
The principles above turn into practice through these. They're what makes a Gild retainer different from a typical agency engagement — and the things we won't flex on.
Partner-led every account.
Sarah, Taylor, or another partner is on every call, every roadmap, every quarterly review. Not a relationship layer — the actual operator.
Fixed monthly retainer. No performance fees.
We don't make more money when you spend more. The recommendation is always honest because the incentive is always aligned.
Quarterly OKRs you sign off on.
No work begins without alignment in writing. No surprise scope changes mid-quarter. Resets happen at quarter-end, with you in the room.
One Slack channel, one shared roadmap.
Not three reporting cadences across three vendors. One source of truth, owned by your team and ours together.
Senior operators, day one.
Junior account managers don't ship. Every account is staffed with people who have carried a P&L on the inside.
AI-augmented, human-led.
We use AI where it makes execution faster — research, drafting, data summarization. Not where it would make the work generic.
Sarah and Taylor.
Two operators who couldn't find what they wanted, so they built it. Both have been on every Gild engagement since 2014.
Sarah Lovingood
Co-Founder · Performance & Strategy
Sarah leads strategy and performance marketing across the Gild roster. Before founding Gild in 2014, she ran ecommerce inside brands across beauty and home — the seat that taught her what mid-market founders actually need (and what they're sold instead).
Taylor Rains
Co-Founder · Storefront & Retention
Taylor leads storefront operations and retention across the Gild roster. He came up running Shopify-native ecom for DTC brands and learned the hard way that the best retention strategy starts with a storefront that actually merchandises.
Built somewhere that takes its time.
Gild is headquartered in Charleston — a city that knows how to do something well, slowly, with character. It shapes how we run client work: senior people, considered moves, no urgency theater.
We hold the partner tiers the model demands.
See what one team
can run for you.
A 30-minute intro call. We'll review your stack, surface the highest-leverage moves, and tell you honestly if we're a fit — or who else might be.