Citizens of Soil
Three years of olive oil growth
A long-term partnership across Shopify, subscriptions, and paid media — growing Citizens of Soil from a small D2C brand into a market-leading olive oil club.
Overview
Citizens of Soil makes exceptional extra virgin olive oil, sourced directly from independent farmers and delivered to subscribers every month. When they came to Tribe in 2023, they had a good product and a growing audience — but a site and subscription experience that wasn’t keeping pace with either.
Three years later, the business has grown significantly across every dimension. Active subscriptions have grown more than 130% year on year. Organic search has become the store’s single biggest traffic channel. The site has been rebuilt, expanded to the US, and upgraded to Shopify Plus. And the subscription programme now converts 62% of all checkout orders — placing Citizens of Soil in the 92nd percentile for their vertical on Recharge.
This is the story of how that happened.
The results
- ➜ 62% of checkout orders include a subscription — 92nd percentile in the Food & Beverages vertical (industry median: 11%)
- ➜ Active churn rate of 2.3% — against an industry median of 5.1%
- ➜ Renewal rate of 86.7% — 88th percentile for the vertical
- ➜ Subscribers generate 1.9x more revenue than one-time customers over their first 12 months
- ➜ +190% gross sales growth year on year (2025 vs 2024)
- ➜ Site conversion rate improved from 0.95% to 2.85% over the engagement
- ➜ Organic search average position improved from 11.8 to 6.0 within twelve months
Building the right foundation
The original engagement started with a full Shopify build — a new theme designed and built from scratch, with the subscription customer experience at the centre. The goal wasn’t just a new look; it was a site architecture that made subscribing the obvious, low-friction choice. This meant rethinking the product pages, the navigation, the cart, and crucially the framing of the subscription itself. The shift from “refill subscription” to “The Olive Oil Club” wasn’t cosmetic — it changed what the product meant to customers. Members were joining something, not signing up for deliveries.
Growing the subscription base
Subscription growth at Citizens of Soil has been consistent across three years, not a single spike. In year one, the focus was building the base: getting the onboarding experience right, implementing Recharge flows, and optimising the conversion from first visit to first subscription. In year two, scale followed — driven by a combination of paid media, improving organic visibility, and a product range that gave subscribers more reasons to stay.
The retention numbers reflect the quality of the experience built. An active churn rate of 2.3% — against an industry median of 5.1% — means once someone joins the club, they tend to stay. Subscribers place 5.2x more orders than one-time customers across their first twelve months.
The ceramic upsell mechanic
One of the clearest examples of Tribe’s commercial thinking applied to development is the ceramic olive oil pourer. When Citizens of Soil introduced the pourer — and later a ceramic bottle — Tribe built the mechanism that made it a meaningful revenue driver rather than a side product.
Subscribers get exclusive access to the ceramic at a discounted price. The upsell is embedded directly into the Olive Oil Club PDP — not a popup, not a separate page — so it arrives at exactly the right moment in the purchase journey. The same mechanic works within the Recharge portal, allowing existing subscribers to add it to their next order without friction.
The pourer is now the second highest revenue-generating product on the entire store. The ceramic bottle gift variant has reached near-parity with the standard gift bundle within months of launch.
Gifting as a growth channel
Gift subscriptions are a significant part of the Citizens of Soil model — and Tribe built the infrastructure to make them work properly.
The gifting flows cover every stage: gift purchased, gift unclaimed, gift redeemed, and expiry reminders across both the gift giver and recipient journeys. Each runs through Recharge with custom Klaviyo flows built specifically for the gifting context.
The results compound over time. Gift subscription flow revenue has grown nearly 500% year on year, as both the subscriber base and gifting volumes have scaled. The 12-month gift redeemed flow now delivers a revenue per recipient nearly three times higher than it did twelve months ago — a direct result of ongoing A/B testing on messaging and timing.
Expanding the platform
In November 2025, Tribe launched the Citizens of Soil US store — a full design and build across us.citizensofsoil.com, bringing the brand to a new market. In March 2026, the UK store was upgraded to Shopify Plus, followed by an expansion store architecture project to integrate both markets under a single platform infrastructure.
The engagement is ongoing. Three years in, the work is more technically complex than it’s ever been — and the business it supports is the largest it’s ever been.
Paid media
From October 2023 to March 2025, Tribe managed both Meta and Google Ads for Citizens of Soil. Over that period, Meta spend scaled from a standing start to over £14k per month, with peak ROAS of 2.01x and CPA as low as £12.40 during the best-performing months. Google Ads ran as a leaner, always-on channel — consistently delivering above 1.5x ROAS at under £13 CPA, with December 2024 hitting 5.11x ROAS at £5.04 CPA during the gifting peak.
