Tech Decisions Without a Tech Team

How creative teams can make smart tech decisions

It’s one of the most common setups we see: a fast-growing brand, doing £15-50m in revenue, running on a creative, founder-led team with no internal tech hires.

So who’s making the tech decisions?

Usually: whoever built the site, whatever the agency recommended, or whoever shouted loudest in a Slack channel.

And that’s not always a bad thing.

The Strength (and Risk) of Creative-Led Decision Making

Creative teams tend to prioritise speed, usability, and aesthetics. And in the early days, that’s a competitive advantage. Need a new landing page? Just brief the agency. Want a new app? Grab something from the Shopify App Store and hope it works.

The problem? That decision-making doesn’t scale. As the business grows, the small, siloed choices start clashing:

• Your data lives in five different places

• Integrations become more fragile

• Nobody owns the roadmap (because there isn’t one)

You reach a point where tech stops being an enabler, and starts becoming a blocker.

How to Know You’re Outgrowing Creative-Led Tech

You might not notice it at first. The team still feels nimble. Decisions get made quickly. But then the cracks start to show. Suddenly, you're spending more time patching issues than planning for the future. Nobody knows where the 'source of truth' lives for your customer data. A simple promotion or content tweak takes hours of back-and-forth between your agency, your CRM, and your fulfilment partner. You're juggling multiple apps that don’t quite talk to each other, when one integrated solution could’ve done the job.

That’s when you know the model is starting to break.

Making Smarter Tech Choices Without Hiring a Team

Here’s the good news: you don’t need to rush to hire a CTO or build out a full-stack dev team. What you need is a way to make better decisions with the team you do have.

That means:

• Clarifying ownership: who makes the final call on tech?

• Documenting decisions: what tools are we using and why?

• Understanding impact: how does this affect other systems or teams?

And if you can bring in outside expertise to support that process (whether that’s a consultant, systems partner, or experienced freelancer), even better. Because the best tech decisions are rarely just about technology. They’re about trade-offs, team workflows, and timing.

Building a Network of Specialists

If you’re not hiring internally, you’re going to need backup.

Not just a developer on speed dial or a mate who “knows Shopify.” We’re talking about a trusted bench of people you can call on when things get complicated, data architects, systems integrators, CRO experts, and the kind of CRM nerds who get excited about flows and segmentation.

Because no single person knows it all. And most agencies (ours included) won’t claim to be good at everything.

The smartest brands build relationships with a handful of go-to specialists who slot in as needed. They don’t waste time putting out briefs or onboarding a new freelancer every time something breaks. They already know who to call, what that person’s good at, and where they’ve got gaps.

At a certain point, you’ve got to stop winging it

It’s a fast track to the right answers. The right network is full of people who’ve been there, done it, and learned the hard lessons already, so you don’t have to. They’ve made the mistakes. You just get the benefit of knowing how to avoid them.

Meet the Specialists

Paul Rogers - Vervaunt
Speak to Paul if you’re stuck between platforms, thinking about replatforming, or need to sense-check how your front-end stack is holding up. He’s worked with some of the best-known names in DTC and knows how to scale eCommerce setups without killing performance.
LinkedIn

Commerce Thinking
If your back office is slowing you down, broken flows, messy data, or tools that don’t talk to each other, we can help. We specialise in systems architecture, process design, and making the whole machine run smoother.

Chris Ormonde - We Are Whanau
Talk to Chris when operations are getting complex. He’s scaled logistics setups across multiple brands and regions, and he’s the person we go to when fulfilment, inventory, or warehousing gets tricky.
LinkedIn

Greg Thorndick - We Are Whanau
Greg’s your guy for commercial strategy. If you’re unsure how to price, where to launch next, or how to balance DTC and wholesale, he’s been there, and helped brands find the right path through it. Both Chris and Greg’s advice make a direct and significant impact to brands P&L.
LinkedIn

Sarah Brereton
Speak to Sarah if you want to get more from your customer data. She knows CDPs, CRM strategy, and how to build meaningful journeys that don’t just spam people with 10%-off emails.
LinkedIn

Factory
Bring in Factory when your front-end needs to do more than just look good. They specialise in building high-performance storefronts for creator-led brands, international retailers, and complex multi-market setups.
Linkedin

What It Looks Like When It Works

We work with brands who don’t have tech teams. What they do have is clarity. They know:

• What their tech stack needs to do

• Who they can call when things go wrong

• Where their gaps are (and how to fill them temporarily)

That’s often all you need to get from £20m to £50m. Beyond that, yes,you’ll likely need to bring some of it in-house.

But until you reach that point, don’t rush to build a team you’re not ready to manage. Make the most of your existing setup by being deliberate with your decisions, proactive with documentation, and open to outside input.

You don’t need a tech department to make strategic tech choices. You just need clarity, confidence, and the right kind of support.