Go / No-Go Decision Framework

🎯Purpose

A pre-committed set of thresholds that decide when (and whether) to spend real money. Deciding the rules now, while unemotional, protects you from the two classic mistakes: buying stock too early (excitement) and quitting too early (impatience).

The cardinal rule

🚨Do not import inventory until the Stage-1 gate is met.

Capital follows evidence. Every spend stage below is locked until its trigger trips.

Gate 1 — "Is there demand?" (trigger the first import)

Read this at the Week 12 checkpoint (and monthly after). Treat as a scorecard, not a single number.

Signal	Green (Go)	Amber (wait / iterate)	Red (rethink)
Organic sessions/mo	≥ 5,000	1,500–5,000	< 1,500 after 4–6 mo
GSC impressions trend	Rising 20%+ MoM	Flat	Falling
Buyer-intent keywords in top 10	≥ 5	1–4	0
Waitlist signups	≥ 300	100–300	< 100
Waitlist → "would pay Rs X" (survey)	≥ 40% yes	20–40%	< 20%
Add-to-cart / "notify me" rate	≥ 4%	2–4%	< 2%

Decision:

Mostly Green → GO. Place a small first import (test quantity, see Sourcing-and-Import). Don't over-order.
Amber → ITERATE. Improve content, keywords, offer, page conversion. Re-check in 4–6 weeks.
Mostly Red after a fair 4–6 month effort → NO-GO or PIVOT. Options: pivot positioning (e.g., lead with savings vs. comfort), test paid to see if demand is createable, narrow to a sharper niche (e.g., teens/postpartum), or shelve. You will have spent almost nothing on stock — this is a successful, cheap "no."

Gate 2 — "Do the economics work?" (scale spend)

After the first import sells through, before reordering bigger or funding paid ads:

❗The four numbers that must hold

Contribution margin ≥ 45% after COGS, import, payment, COD/RTO. (Unit-Economics)
RTO (COD return-to-origin) < 20%. (Payments-and-COD)
Sell-through of first import ≥ 60% within 90 days.
CAC < 35% of AOV on first paid tests (if running paid).

Hold all four → scale (reorder larger, turn on paid, add Daraz). Miss any → fix it before adding fuel.

Gate 3 — "Can it become big?" (push toward $1M)

Repeat purchase / referral measurable and improving (LTV climbing).
Paid ROAS ≥ 2.5–3x sustainably.
Operations (fulfilment, CS, returns) not breaking under volume.
Then: SKU expansion, channel stacking, and revisit export (the parked phase-2 lever) to reach $1M faster than domestic alone allows. (Million-Dollar-Math)

Pre-committed kill criteria

⚠️We agree NOW to stop if:

After 6 months of genuine content effort, Gate 1 is solidly Red and a paid smoke test can't produce sub-target CAC. The category isn't ready or isn't us — walk, with capital intact.
First import RTO > 35% and unfixable — the COD economics are broken for this product in this market.

Writing kill criteria down in advance is how you avoid the sunk-cost spiral. Revisit, don't rationalize.

SEO-First-Validation-Plan · Million-Dollar-Math · Unit-Economics · Payments-and-COD · Sourcing-and-Import