Closing a Client Chapter After Nearly Six Years

Borrowed

"When we become fixated on winning and losing, our judgment narrows. Everything starts to look like an urgent test of success or failure, and from that place, it’s easy to choose the wrong path. Only when we step outside that frame, when we let go of competition altogether, do we create the space to actually change and correct ourselves.”

From “The Courage to Be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga [Book]

Learned

One of our clients, who has been with us for nearly six years, officially let us know they’ll be moving on to another agency.

When I told Barrel co-founder Peter what had happened, he remarked that it would probably end up in my newsletter. I hadn’t really thought about it at the time, but he was right. It felt like one of those moments worth sitting with.

I say “officially” because earlier this year, I had a sense this might be coming.

In March, I spent time with one of their senior stakeholders at a conference. Retail was continuing to grow, but DTC wasn’t growing at the pace they’d hoped. That’s not unusual as distribution expands and products become more available everywhere, but the pressure was starting to show. They asked what we were seeing with other clients, and we talked through a few ideas. I also shared that a larger rethink of the website might be worthwhile.

It was the same site we launched five years earlier. While we’d continued to maintain and evolve it through ongoing optimization and new features, the underlying infrastructure was still the original build. We had aligned that moving to Shopify 2.0 would unlock greater flexibility and performance as the business scaled. It was something we talked about more than once, but timing and budget kept pushing it out.

Nothing came out of that conversation. I shared the context with the team, and we kept supporting them with priority initiatives. I also tried to keep the conversation going. We caught up again in August, focused mostly on strategy, and I connected them with a couple of partners I thought could be helpful.

A few months later, we connected again, this time more directly about the future. They had brought on a CRO agency earlier in the year. We had proposed similar work, but they chose a different perspective. Another early signal. Sales still weren’t where they needed them to be, and tariffs were now part of the equation. In short, our stakeholder was being asked to do more with less. Tighter budgets. Higher expectations.

On that call, they shared that they were beginning to explore new partners. It was clear they felt the need to try something different. I understood. No decisions were made, but I asked if they’d be open to us sharing another perspective.

We brought new team members into the account, took a deeper look at site performance, and pulled together our point of view. Even if it didn’t change the outcome, it felt worth doing. Nonetheless, the presentation was well received. Then things went quiet.

So when an email came through weeks later asking for another call, I had a feeling I knew what it would be about.

When we got on the call, I could feel the tension right away. I’ve been on the other end of conversations like that enough times to recognize it. We made some small talk, and then she shared the decision.

I wasn’t angry or upset. I felt prepared. And there wasn’t anything to push back on.

As she talked, I put myself in her shoes. The pressure to show action. The responsibility to signal change. The need to try something different, even when the partnership had been strong. I thanked her, told her no worries, and let her know how much we’d valued the years working together.

We talked through how to make the transition as smooth as possible. She shared how grateful they were for our support over the year, how much we had helped them grow, and emphasized that she’d be happy to be a reference. She also mentioned that they were stepping away from other agency relationships. This wasn’t about one partner. It was about creating a reset.

Things went as well as they could have. But after the call, I found myself reflecting. We often talk about how converting a customer is just the beginning of a relationship with a brand. Keeping that relationship strong over time is a challenge in itself. The same is true for agencies.

In many ways, I’m proud of this engagement. Over six years, this brand nearly tripled in size. They experienced Barrel across different stages of our own growth, too. How we structure engagements. The types of clients we support. Our services. When they first started with us, I was leading the design team. I didn’t get involved and even meet our key stakeholder until the year before stepping into the CEO role.

What I keep coming back to isn’t whether we added value. We did. It’s whether we could have done more to consistently show how much we’ve evolved, especially in a long-standing relationship where familiarity can quietly set in.

I would have loved to keep building together. And I’m genuinely proud of the time and work we shared. At the same time, I understand why this moment called for something new.

As we work through next steps and this chapter comes to a close, I’m carrying both things with me. A feeling of gratitude for what we built, and a sharper awareness of what it takes to keep a relationship fresh long enough to turn six years into ten.

And being able to let it end without forcing a different outcome feels like part of the job, too.

Thought

Where might accepting an ending create space for something new to take shape?