Beyond the Platform: The Case for Vertical Depth in Agency Positioning

In the agency world, positioning often gets treated like a tagline exercise. Pick a platform, pick a service, polish the capabilities deck. But real positioning isn’t cosmetic. It’s a set of choices about who you’re built to serve and the problems you’re willing to own. And when you commit to those choices, entirely new opportunities open up.

Barrel, one of our firms in our Barrel Holdings portfolio, learned this the hard way. For years we framed ourselves as a Shopify agency. There was nothing wrong with that. We delivered strong work, we built a recognizable reputation, and Shopify remained (and still remains) a core part of our expertise. But the center of gravity in our client base was shifting. The most valuable clients we worked with weren’t simply “DTC companies on Shopify.” They were CPG businesses operating across online, retail, wholesale, Amazon, and creator channels. Their world was omnichannel by default and the gaps they needed help with weren’t confined to a storefront build.

A few years ago, Barrel’s current CEO Lucas Ballasy and I sketched out a different path. If we wanted to be indispensable to modern CPG brands, we had to go deeper. That meant evolving Barrel from a Shopify-first shop into a partner built around CPG omnichannel commerce. New expertise. New service mixes. New ICP discipline. And a willingness to say no to work that didn’t fit.

The results have been meaningful. Of the 19 new brands Barrel onboarded this year, 17 fit squarely into the CPG ideal client profile. Many of them entered through a Shopify site build or redesign but expanded quickly into broader workstreams: retention marketing, content creation, conversion rate optimization, SEO and AI search optimization. Half of those clients have already signed on for additional scopes.

Just as important, the work looks and feels different. Barrel’s recent focused celebrity and creator-backed CPG brand campaign is a good example. It pulls together merchandising, brand strategy, performance insights, and conversion design specific to a CPG buying journey driven by influencer reach and retail channels. It’s not a generic Shopify-focused campaign. It’s an expert POV and aligned services to support how CPG growth actually happens.

Our other marketing efforts have been dialed in thanks to the positioning. Lucas’s Off the Shelf! series with CPG influencer Nate Rosen has become a consistent signal of expertise. The team is increasingly present at CPG events, meetups, and industry gatherings. And internally, the positioning gives Barrel a far clearer lens for hiring, training, and productizing services.

What’s striking is that even with all this progress, the team still feels they’re early in the journey. Going deeper hasn’t narrowed the opportunity. It has expanded it. By committing to a clear vertical and the realities of omnichannel commerce, Barrel moved from being one of many Shopify specialists to one of the few agencies built expressly for the future of CPG.

This is what strong positioning does. It sharpens your relevance, strengthens your differentiation, and converts expertise into momentum. The deeper you go, the more doors open.