Your margin is lying to you.
Margin Intelligence OS connects your Shopify, 3PL, and ad accounts to show the contribution margin you actually earn — per SKU, per channel, after every cost. Because the number in your Shopify dashboard is not the number that pays your bills.
Built by Structora for DTC Shopify brands doing $1M–$10M.
SKU · CANDLE-45
Amber Candle, 8 oz — $45.00
Shopify says
73% margin
Real contribution margin
73%
The P&L says profitable. The bank account disagrees.
You think your margin is 58%. Shopify told you so. But Shopify has never seen your 3PL invoice, doesn't know your supplier raised unit costs in March, and counts a refunded order as if the outbound shipping never happened. Your real contribution margin — on your best-selling SKU — might be 31%. You've been scaling ad spend against a number that doesn't exist.
Here's how it actually plays out. A $45 candle with $12 in COGS looks like a 73% margin. Then the 3PL charges $6.80 to pick, pack, and ship it. Returns run 11% on that SKU, and each one costs you the refund, the return label, and half the product. Meta attribution says the ads are printing money, but spend per unit actually sold puts that channel underwater. None of this shows up anywhere — until you connect it.
The worst part is where the losses hide. Most brands we audit have at least one hero SKU quietly losing money on every order — usually the heavy one, the discounted one, or the one that gets returned twice as often as the rest. It sells well, so nobody looks. The winners subsidize it, the blended margin looks fine, and the cash gap grows a little every month.
| SKU | Units / mo | Real CM |
|---|---|---|
| BUNDLE-TRIO | 610 | +38% |
| TUMBLER-20 | 890 | +27% |
| CANDLE-45hero SKU | 1,240 | −6% |
The best seller loses money on every order. The winners subsidize it, and nobody looks — because the blended number looks fine.
What you get
One place where every cost meets every order
Live margin dashboard
Revenue, COGS, fulfillment, returns, and what's actually left — from your real data, not your assumptions.
SKU-level breakdown
Every SKU ranked by true contribution margin, so you know which products fund the business and which drain it.
Channel comparison
Contribution margin by traffic source, so you scale the channels that earn and cut the ones that only look like they do.
Weekly AI brief
A 60-second brief every Monday: your three key numbers, any anomalies, and the three actions that matter this week.
Find out what your margin really is.
A full audit of your last 12 months — every SKU, every channel, every cost — delivered in week one.
Book a margin audit