Key takeaways
- IM8 survives a $300 blended CAC through quarterly billing, which collects $324 on day one against $128 for a monthly cycle.
- Quarterly billing reached 54.8% of IM8 revenue by July 2026 and lifted revenue per billed customer from $119 to $204 with no price increase.
- IM8’s retention numbers are still early, since half of its 140,000 subscriptions are under 3 months old and only 10.4% are a year old.
IM8 is THE success story in supplements right now. $0.4M a month at launch, $20.9M in July. No supplement brand has grown this fast.
I read IM8’s Q2 2026 investor deck so you do not have to.
In short, it’s high AOV, high CAC, and high hopes. And cross your fingers on retention.
They pay $300 (blended CAC) to get the customer and collect $207 upfront (blended first order AOV).
And the base is too young to tell anyone whether the retention actually holds.
Here are 5 things that stood out.
1. $300 CAC (!!!) with 3-6 month payback
CAC is at $300. In July it came down to $239 (only for a month).
Not sure how many brands can stomach that even after raising funds.
What makes it survivable is the billing, not the marketing.
Blended first order is $207. But a quarterly order collects $324 on day one. You get three months of cash before you have earned it.
Mature cohorts pay back in 3 to 6 months. Run the same $300 CAC on monthly billing, and you are waiting a lot longer, eating churn the whole way.
Takeaway: if you are fighting to shave $20 off your CAC, you are working on the wrong side of the equation. Move the AOV instead.
2. Quarterly went from 0 to 55% of revenue in 9 months
Last quarter I wrote that quarterly billing was working for them. This quarter it took over the company.
Quarterly launched at scale in December 2025. By March 2026 it passed monthly. By July it was 54.8% of all revenue.
A quarterly order collects $324. A monthly cycle collects $128. Same product, same customer, 2.5x the cash on day one.
If you run this play, your monthly cohorts will look like they are dying for two quarters. Better to know that going in than to panic halfway through.
3. Impressive 14.2% Retention at Month 20!
But take it with a pinch of salt.
The company is barely 2 years old, so most likely that cohort is small, and made up of the more committed users. The initial loyal bunch.
Not sure if that holds as it matures.
An independent US card panel tracked December 2024 cohorts across four brands through July 2026.
At month 20, still transacting: IM8 14.2%. Thorne 11.4%. AG1 10.8%. Grüns 2.4%.
P&G paid $3.8B for Thorne this year at 5.8x revenue. Thorne retains less at twenty months.
Average transaction value is at $181, which is roughly 2x a regular supplement brand.
4. The Subscription Engine
87% of revenue is recurring.
140,000 active subscriptions. 6x in 15 months. And the base has grown every single month since they started counting.
$11M came from existing customers in July alone. 3.5x last year.
The number I like most: revenue per billed customer went from $119 to $204. Up 72%. They did not raise a single price to get there. It is all billing frequency.
Customers billed grew 2.5x. What each one pays grew 56%. Both at the same time.
That is the part most brands never get. They usually trade one for the other.
97% of quarterly charges collect. Good number. Though 3% of $11.5M a month is $345K sitting in dunning, and on a $324 charge, every failure hurts a lot more than it does on a $128 one.
5. More AOV Play Than Retention Play
140,000 active subscriptions is the headline number.
Half of them are under 3 months old. 16.9% are under 30 days. Only 10.4% are a year old.
Most of that base has not had the chance to churn yet. Every retention number you compute on it looks better than it is.
Second thing, and they never say this one out loud.
Revenue from existing customers grew 3.5x. The whole business grew 4.3x.
So the base is growing slower than the company. New customers are carrying more of the revenue than they did last year, not less. For a brand this subscription heavy, you want that the other way around.
Put those two together, and the impressive part of this deck is AOV, not retention.
$324 a quarterly order. $207 first order. $204 per billed customer per month. Those numbers are real, and they are doing the heavy lifting.
The retention numbers are just early. 20 months of history, and half the base walked in during the last 90 days.
IM8 is an impressive subscription story with lots to learn from. But it’s still early for retention.
I would not copy their retention playbook yet. I would copy their subscription structure and offer.
For curious minds, here’s the link to the actual report.
To see where your subscription program stacks up against IM8, get a free audit.
