About
A brand practice run by someone who also builds the thing.
Background
Craft Grow is the consultancy of Josh Malczyk, based in Seattle, Washington.
The day job has been global brand leadership in consumer sports — running marketing for performance hardgoods brands across brand strategy, endemic media, film and athlete programs, retail, and performance channels. Global scope, real distribution, actual inventory to move.
What makes the practice unusual is the other half. The same person writing the positioning also audits the merchant feed, structures the product data, writes the PDP copy, and instruments the analytics. That combination is rare, and it’s the entire reason Craft Grow exists — strategy that has to answer to execution tends to be better strategy.
How I work
Four things I’ll hold you to.
- 01
Strategy that survives a spreadsheet
A position that can't be turned into a product attribute, a page title, and a sales line isn't finished. The test of a strategy is whether people downstream can act on it without asking what it means.
- 02
The boring layer matters most
Feeds, taxonomy, naming conventions, measurement. It's unglamorous and it's usually where the money is — because nobody wants to own it, so nobody does.
- 03
Say the true thing specifically
Vague superlatives are what brands reach for when they don't know what's actually good about the product. The specific truth is almost always more persuasive than the general claim.
- 04
Small scope, real answer
I'd rather solve one thing properly than sell a program. If a project doesn't need me, I'll say so — that's worth more to both of us than a retainer.
Engagements
Most work is project-based with a defined scope and endpoint. Some clients keep a standing day or two a month for the ongoing stuff — feed health, launch reviews, the questions that come up between projects.
Craft Grow is deliberately small. That means direct access and no account layer, and it also means I take on a limited number of projects at a time. If the timing doesn’t work I’ll tell you early.