How much is design really costing your brand?
Most brands have no idea. This calculator shows you the number.
DTC brands at $1M–$3M revenue typically spend $50,000–$120,000 per year on design and creative production — without ever seeing it as a single number. At $5M+, that figure climbs to $200,000–$400,000 or more. Enter your volume and get your number in under two minutes.
Every Touchpoint in Your Customer's Journey Is a Creative Decision
And your competitors are in that same forest.
The moment a potential customer enters your market, they're navigating a forest of brands all competing for the same attention. Every creative touchpoint is a branch in that forest. The brands that produce more of these touchpoints, at higher quality, build an asymmetric presence that compounds over time.
Calculate Your Brand's Real Design Cost
Enter your creative volume below.
How Does This Calculator Measure Design Costs?
Every benchmark is sourced from published agency rate tables, industry research, and Olivia's internal data from 10,000+ DTC brands. All estimates are deliberately conservative.
Industry range is $2,000–$20,000 per shoot. We use $48/photo as a conservative per-unit figure — well below the agency floor. The timeline accounts for pre-production planning (typically 2+ weeks), shoot day, and post-production editing. Photography is the most frequently underestimated line item in DTC creative budgets because it's invoiced per shoot rather than per asset.
Agencies charge $100–$250 per ad creative. We use $75 — below the published floor. Each ad involves ideation, copywriting, design brief, execution, and revision rounds. 500 ad variations at an agency cost $50,000–$125,000. Olivia generates 12–24 simultaneously from one brief, with no per-asset fee.
Agencies charge $200–$500 per email design. We use $250 — mid-range. Full email flow redesigns (abandoned cart, welcome, post-purchase, winback) cost $8,000–$25,000 at agencies and take 4–6 weeks. Olivia redesigns a complete email program in one session and deploys directly to Klaviyo with one click.
We use $4,000 per video — a conservative mid-range figure from the $2,000–$10,000 agency range. Traditional production includes scripting, talent coordination, shoot day, editing, and multi-format export — approximately 120 hours per video. Olivia's autonomous video agent handles all of this in one pass, included in your plan.
CRO-optimized landing pages cost $8,000–$25,000 at agencies, with split test variants adding $1,500–$5,000 each. Dedicated landing pages outperform homepages on paid traffic by 2–5× on conversion rate. Moving CVR from 3% to 6% on $30,000/month in ad spend generates approximately $10,000 in additional monthly revenue — without spending another dollar on media.
Olivia's cost includes the base plan ($100/month) plus per-generation usage costs for photography, ads, email, and social. Video, landing pages, and website pages are included in the plan at no additional per-unit cost. The marginal cost of each additional asset in Olivia approaches $0 — which is why the gap between traditional and Olivia costs grows non-linearly as creative volume increases.
What DTC brands do with the capital when design stops consuming it
The most important number this calculator produces isn't what you save — it's what that capital becomes when deployed into the inputs that actually move revenue.
Frequently asked questions about DTC design costs
DTC brands at $1M–$3M in revenue typically spend $50,000–$120,000 annually across all creative categories. At $5M+, the figure commonly reaches $200,000–$400,000 when photography, agency retainers, video production, and web development are combined. This calculator gives you an accurate figure for your specific volume.
Olivia is invite-only. Two ways in.
Both start with seeing it on your brand.
Every brand that gets access receives personalised brand DNA training, platform setup, and a real walkthrough of Olivia generating design and creative assets for their specific products — before any commitment is required.
Live interactive AI demo
A live 15-minute walkthrough of the Olivia platform — how it works, what it designs and creates, and how it connects to your existing stack. You'll see Olivia generating real design and creative assets in real time. No prep required.
Custom brand demo with Benson
A private, pre-prepared 30-minute session with Benson Sung, Co-Founder and CEO. Before your call, the Olivia team researches your brand, ingests your products, and builds a custom demonstration — so you see Olivia working on your actual brand in real time. Includes a special onboarding offer.
Cost benchmarks sourced from published agency rate tables, industry surveys, and Olivia's data from 10,000+ DTC brands. All estimates are conservative.