Black Friday Cyber Monday Recap & The Forecasting Process Behind Ecom Profit - with Richie Mashiko

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Dec 9, 2025

Richie Mashiko, Head of Beacon at Iris Finance and a finance consultant for e-commerce brands, breaks down the performance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. He discusses the importance of media mix diversification and how different brand sizes navigated the Cyber Five. Richie shares insights on building accurate financial forecasts, emphasizing the need for alignment between marketing and finance. He dives into cohort behavior, contribution margins, and why many brands misforecast by neglecting marketing in their planning.

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ANECDOTE

Birdie Rebooted Ads In October

Richie restarted She's Birdie ads in October after months offline and focused on efficiency before scaling.
The brand returned to profitable performance despite lower spend and reduced scale.

ADVICE

Measure Funnel Health, Not Just Revenue

Track funnel metrics (unique users, product page views, active cart users) as leading indicators, not just revenue.
Use those KPIs to validate top-of-funnel investments before peak events.

ADVICE

Use Flex Ads As A Scale Lever

Test meta flex ads grouped by concept (whitelisting, static sale, UGC) to increase scalable top spenders.
Allocate a modest percent of meta budget to flex ads and run holdouts to validate lift.

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This week, we’re joined by Richie Mashiko - Head of Beacon at Iris Finance for a full breakdown of how BFCM played out across their businesses. Together, the group recaps what actually drove performance this year, from media-mix diversification and top-of-funnel investment to traffic dynamics, conversion-rate behavior, and how different brand sizes approached Cyber Five strategy.

From there, Richie walks through his forecasting philosophy - including how he builds bottoms-up financial models, how diminishing returns shape CAC and forecasting assumptions, and how finance and marketing need to stay aligned around realistic growth expectations. The group also dives into contribution margin, AMER, customer mix, and why so many brands forecast incorrectly when marketing isn’t part of the planning process.

They then unpack the levers that actually make an ecommerce business profitable: cohort behavior, scaling past category saturation, interpreting flat conversion rates alongside surging traffic, and what contribution dollars really tell you. Richie shares lessons learned from She’s Birdie’s rebuild year and how smaller brands can apply the same financial discipline as companies operating at nine-figure scale.

If you're trying to understand your BFCM results, build a forecast that reflects reality, or get finance and marketing speaking the same language, this episode is a must-listen.

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Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:06:40 - BFCM recap

00:24:47 - Media Mix Strategy

00:41:52 - International Markets

00:53:44 - FP&A Background

01:07:05 - Building a Forecast

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