Pet nutrition · D2C subscription · Multi-territory
From a fragmented reporting stack to a fully managed analytics platform – in 4 weeks.
Bella & Duke is one of the UK's leading D2C subscription brands in pet nutrition, with a fast-growing customer base, a complex subscription business, expanding into retail distribution and international territories and a leadership team that runs the business on data and customer insights.
Client: Bella & Duke
At a glance
- Client – Bella & Duke – premium omnichannel pet food subscription brand
- Sector – Multi-territory, D2C subscription & retail, pet nutrition
- Engagement – CX Data platform rollout with data infrastructure revamp
- Timeline – 4 weeks
- Platform – CX Data platform built on a Snowflake data layer, fully managed by CX Data
- Adoption – 25+ daily active users across growth, conversion, customer experience and SLT
The starting point
As the brand scaled, the analytics function, even though built on solid foundations, had begun to creak. Three challenges came up consistently in conversations with James Sturrock (CEO) and the SLT:
- Reporting was slow to build and slow to change – production took weeks and the backlog kept growing.
- Insight was reactive. SLT were leading with the questions (“how do we better understand longer-term retention?”) rather than data leading with the answers.
- There was no clear read on whether the underlying infrastructure was the right setup, or how new data sources should be integrated efficiently.
The brief to CX Data was deliberately outcome-led: build the foundations to give commercial and trading teams proactive analytics they can act on and take ownership of the data engineering and reporting layer so the in-house team could focus on higher-value work.
The platform
The CX Data platform sits directly on top of Bella & Duke's Snowflake data layer, consuming trusted, analytics-ready tables and turning them into a purpose-built reporting and insight layer for a D2C subscription business – covering acquisition, conversion, retention, subscription health and customer LTV.
Highlights of what went live:
- Purpose-built, customised dashboards covering trading, cohort retention, acquisition, conversion funnel and customer lifetime value.
- A reporting layer designed to answer ~80% of standard commercial, trading and operational questions out of the box, replacing 50+ reports across Looker and Sigma.
- Data pipeline refreshes reduced from ~6 hours to under 45 minutes.
- A unified enterprise data model spanning customers, pets, subscriptions and orders.
- In-person user enablement and training to drive adoption from day one.
What we delivered
| What Bella & Duke wanted | What they had | How CX Data solved it |
|---|---|---|
| Fast production of reporting that allows quick, actionable review of KPIs across teams. | Slow report building – weeks of work and a growing backlog of fixes. Reports that didn’t allow simple analysis or manipulation. | Deployed CX Data’s purpose-built D2C reporting suite on top of Snowflake. Trading, cohort retention, acquisition, conversion and LTV reports live and self-serve in record time. |
| Proactive analytics – trends and issues flagged to teams, not the other way round. | Insights took weeks to come back, and key stakeholders had to lead with the questions instead of the data team surfacing the answers. | Embedded a depth of cuts and dimensions so users can answer their own segmented questions in seconds, freeing the in-house team for higher-value commercial analysis. |
| Confidence in the data infrastructure and a clear path to integrating new data sources. | A good foundation of data infrastructure, but a need for it to be reviewed as the business scaled and became more complex. | Stood up a fully managed Snowflake data layer owned by Bella & Duke and operated end-to-end by CX Data – robust, governed, and ready to absorb new sources without disruption. |
In their words
“CX Data is being used daily by 25+ users across the business, and the feedback is consistent: the platform gives us a depth of data and insight we simply haven’t had before at our fingertips. It’s already saving us many hours of data requests and project work that would normally be needed to answer the kind of segmented questions our teams can now find themselves – in seconds – inside the platform.
What really stands out is the pace at which the solution has been implemented and adopted. The platform was delivered in just four weeks, with purpose-built dashboards covering acquisition, conversion, retention and subscription trends deployed in record time. We can cut the data in ways we couldn’t before, and the team has the visibility to make decisions in the moment rather than waiting on a report cycle.
Beyond the platform, what we’ve really gained is an extended data team. CX Data complements Bella + Duke’s long-term growth strategy, brings a level of D2C and subscription expertise that’s hard to find, and operates as a genuine partner rather than a vendor. It’s a great position to be in.”
James Sturrock, CEO, Bella & Duke
Looking ahead
With the infrastructure and reporting layer live, the next phase focuses on AI enablement – plain-English access to commercial data via Claude and Slack, daily trading updates from the AI Analyst, and a continuously improving knowledge base trained on Bella & Duke's commercial context, with security at the heart of the data strategy. CX Data continues to operate as Bella & Duke's extended data team – a long-term partner aligned to the brand's growth strategy.
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