Litehouse Lighting: How an SA Brand Scaled to 8 Figures

Litehouse is a South African decorative lighting brand, founded in 2020 by brothers Kevan and Mike van der Velde, and based in Cape Town. It sells solar and plug-in string lights, fairy lights, festoon lights, outdoor lanterns, and heaters, and says it has served 57,000+ customers, per its own site. Litehouse grew into an 8-figure light empire by doing four boring things well: picking one niche, fixing product quality, owning the customer relationship through its own Shopify store, and scaling Meta and Google ads with discipline. Mike told us in the V8 Media interview the brand now spends around R10 million a year on ads, started at about R500 a day, and lifted checkout conversion 10 to 14% after a payments upgrade. Here is the full Litehouse story, plus exactly what your store can steal from how they grew. From V8 Media, the team behind R2+ billion in client sales since 2018.

Who is behind Litehouse?

Litehouse was founded in 2020 by brothers Kevan and Mike van der Velde, per the company's "Get To Know Us" page.

Mike van der Velde is a co-founder. He has a BCom from Stellenbosch University and a certificate in import and export management, and he is based in Cape Town, per his LinkedIn.

Before Litehouse, Mike ran UniSky Group, a holding company with multiple private-label ecommerce brands.

So this was not their first rodeo. They had already learned to sell online the hard way.

The brand's mission is simple. "Creating better, brighter moments." Turn an ordinary patio into a place people actually want to sit.

Here are the fast facts before we get into how they grew.

Litehouse	Detail
Founders	Kevan and Mike van der Velde (brothers)
Founded	2020, Cape Town, South Africa
What it is	Direct-to-consumer decorative lighting brand
Products	Solar and plug-in string lights, fairy lights, festoon lights, outdoor lanterns, wall lights, heaters
Store platform	Shopify
Customers served	57,000+ (per litehouse.co.za)
Origin	Takealot marketplace arbitrage, then private label, then a focused brand
Ad spend	~R10 million a year (per the V8 interview)

Sources: Litehouse "Get To Know Us" page and litehouse.co.za product pages; Mike van der Velde's LinkedIn and ZoomInfo profile; first-party numbers from the V8 Media interview with Mike.

So why does a lighting brand matter to you if you sell skincare or biltong? Because the playbook is the same.

Pick a niche. Fix the product. Own the customer. Scale ads with numbers, not vibes.

How did Litehouse start? The Takealot arbitrage era

Litehouse did not start as a brand. It started as a cashflow engine.

Mike and his brother grew up doing small hustles. Selling sweets. Flipping toys to buy better toys.

Their dad had a sneaky rule. If they wanted something, he funded a third and they earned the rest.

Brutal parenting. Brilliant business school. They learned unit economics before they could drive.

Fast forward to Stellenbosch. They started buying from wholesalers and selling on Takealot, around 2015 to 2016.

Back then Takealot was spending hard on growth and there were product gaps everywhere.

The model was simple and a little bit cheeky. Buy from wholesalers who only sold to physical stores. List the products online. Add convenience. Charge a bit more.

Convenience is a tax customers happily pay.

As it grew, they started importing for exclusivity, brought in private-label products, and scaled the operation under UniSky.

At their peak they ran around 25 people. They even managed Takealot accounts for other brands, so they had an agency side and a product side.

Then COVID hit. More sellers flooded online. Products that used to print money started fighting for scraps.

Margins dropped like a phone with no cover. When anyone can source a similar product, your moat is thin.

So they asked the question most sellers avoid. What do we actually want to own?

Why did Litehouse pick one niche and build a real brand?

They decided to stop being everywhere and start being somebody.

So they picked a category. Lighting. Decorative, outdoor, solar lighting.

Sounds random until you remember that quiet niches print money while everyone fights over the loud ones.

The gap was obvious once they looked. Cheap lighting did not last. Returns piled up after a few months.

Even their own best-selling string lights were not as good as they wanted.

So they went deeper. They visited manufacturers. They found better suppliers. They hired an industrial designer.

They studied how products broke, then redesigned the weak points. Better batteries. Better solar panels. Better build.

Quality becomes marketing when customers start leaving five-star reviews for free.

Then they did the part most sellers skip. They built a mission and a story.

Litehouse became about turning spaces into something magical. A dark patio becomes a warm gathering spot. A bland corner gets a mood.

They call it creating better, brighter moments. Soft words. Hard results.

Why does owning your own store (DTC) matter so much?

They left Takealot and built their own store on Shopify. Easy integrations. Fast setup.

Move first, optimise later. Speed beats perfection when you are still learning.

Going from Takealot to direct-to-consumer was not smooth. They had to learn ads properly. They went to conferences. They watched YouTube. They did courses.

Then they switched the ads on and the game changed.

Mike told us the DTC channel grew to roughly 50% of revenue. The other half came from marketplaces and retail partners.

That mix matters. If Takealot goes sideways tomorrow, they still have a business.

But the biggest DTC win was not "more sales". It was feedback.

When you own the customer relationship, you can ask questions and get real answers. Takealot does not hand you that.

Answers are the closest thing to a cheat code you will ever get. Stitch built a whole business on this idea too, and we cover it in how Stitch is changing the payments game.

How does Litehouse use customer surveys to build products?

Litehouse sends surveys to thousands of customers. They offer store credit to get replies.

Mike said they get around a 10% response rate, which is huge for ecommerce.

And customers write back like co-founders. Long, detailed, honest feedback.

They ask about the product. What people liked. What annoyed them. The whole brand experience.

Then they take it seriously and feed it straight into product development.

This does two things at once. It improves the next product. And it makes customers feel heard.

So when the next launch drops, those customers buy again faster. That is repeat revenue, and we dig into it in what drives repeat purchases.

Here is how to copy this without overthinking it.

• Survey the people who already trusted you with their money.
• Offer store credit for finishing the survey.
• Ask 5 to 10 focused questions, plus one open "tell us everything" box.
• Tag answers by theme: quality, delivery, usability, pricing.
• Build your next improvement from the patterns that keep repeating.

You do not need a fancy tool. You need to actually ask, then actually listen.

How does Litehouse scale paid ads? Meta first, Google second

Their main acquisition channel is Meta. Then Google picks up the intent after people go searching.

Meta wakes people up. Google catches them when they go searching. That order matters.

So Google often shows a higher return on ad spend, while Meta takes most of the budget.

They started with a number that scares nobody. About R500 a day. Roughly R15,000 a month.

Then they scaled to around R10 million a year in ad spend, per the V8 interview.

Some people see that number and panic. Mike's point is simple.

If the unit economics work, scaling is logic, not bravery.

Don't fear ad spend. Fear untracked ad spend.

Because online ads are trackable. You can see what a customer costs. You can see what they are worth over time.

Know those two numbers and you can scale without guessing. That is the whole job of a good Meta Ads partner, paired with Google Ads to catch the searches.

What is the broad targeting shift on Meta?

This is where it gets spicy. Litehouse runs Meta ads broad. No interest targeting.

They let the algorithm find buyers, and they pour their energy into creative instead.

At first results dipped. That dip scares most people into switching back to the old way.

But over time performance improved, because the platform learned. They reached pockets of customers they never would have guessed to target.

Mike shared a real example. One summer they did around R1 million to R1.5 million. The next summer they did around R5 million.

That is a 3 to 4x jump, tied to going broad and testing more creative.

This is not just Litehouse being clever. Meta's own guidance now pushes broad audiences through its Advantage+ audience tools, because the algorithm targets better than you can by hand, per Meta Business Help.

Approach	What you control	Litehouse result
Narrow interest targeting	You pick the audiences manually	Caps your reach, hides winning pockets
Broad targeting + strong creative	Algorithm finds buyers, you feed it creative	~R1m to R1.5m one summer, ~R5m the next

Here is the hidden truth. Most brands don't have a targeting problem.

They have a creative problem and a patience problem. Broad targeting just forces you to fix the real one.

This is the same shift Meta's own algorithm changes are pushing everyone toward, which we break down in how we scale ecommerce Meta ads profitably.

Which metrics does Litehouse actually track?

If you measure the wrong thing, you make the wrong decision with full confidence. And confidence is dangerous when you are wrong.

Mike's focus starts with CPA, the cost per acquisition. But CPA alone is half a story.

You need customer lifetime value too. Litehouse tracks LTV over 6 months and over a year.

That tells them what a customer is worth, not just what one purchase is worth. You cannot scale profitably without it, which is exactly the trap we cover in the one metric to measure to grow your store profitably.

Then they watch average order value. AOV is tied to how much you can afford to pay to get a customer.

If AOV climbs through bundles, your CPA can climb too and you still win. People forget this when they chase cheap clicks.

They also use CPM as a signal. A strong ad often earns a lower CPM, because Meta rewards engagement. A rising CPM can mean fatigue.

And they track frequency to see where an ad sits in the funnel.

Metric	What it tells you
CPA (cost per acquisition)	What you paid to get the customer
LTV (lifetime value)	What that customer is worth over 6 to 12 months
AOV (average order value)	What each checkout produces, and what you can afford to spend
CPM (cost per 1,000 views)	How the platform values your creative right now
Frequency	Where the ad is playing in the funnel

Mike's frequency read: around 1.0 to 1.15 is top of funnel, 1.15 to about 1.25 is mid, higher is bottom.

This matters because not every ad needs the same CPA. Some ads introduce the brand. Others close the sale.

Ads work like a team, not like solo heroes.

What conversion levers did Litehouse pull?

First lever: bundles. Litehouse uses bundle offers to lift AOV without nuking the price of the core product.

Bundle discounts feel generous without training people to wait for a sale.

Which leads to Mike's warning. Don't be "always on deal".

If your product is permanently discounted, your brand becomes a discount brand. Customers anchor to the sale price and your normal price becomes a fairy tale.

So Litehouse keeps single units at normal price and puts the incentives on multi-buy or bundles.

Second lever: payments. Mike said they started using Stitch in March and saw a 10 to 14% increase from checkout to purchase.

That tracks. Stitch publicly claims merchants see 10%+ higher conversion on its checkout, per Stitch's own site. So Litehouse's number is right in the expected range.

A big chunk of that lift came from better express checkout, like Apple Pay. Convenience wins when attention spans are short and carts abandon fast.

They also added buy now pay later. One option for now, with more planned, because customers have different accounts and preferences.

More relevant payment options means more completed checkouts. The same leak sinks most stores, and we cover it in the biggest ecommerce conversion rate mistake.

How to improve checkout conversion without rebuilding your store

You don't need to burn down your store to win here. Six steps.

1. Measure your current checkout-to-purchase rate first. No baseline means you will celebrate noise.
2. Add at least one express checkout option your audience actually uses, like Apple Pay.
3. Watch the lift over 14 to 30 days, not 4 hours. Give it time to settle.
4. Add a second payment option, especially if you sell to different customer types.
5. Test buy now pay later if your price point makes sense for it.
6. Simplify checkout fields and cut distractions. Every extra click is a chance to remember they hate spending money.

Small fixes here often beat another R50,000 in ad spend. The traffic is already arriving. Stop tripping it at the door.

What can your store steal from Litehouse?

You do not need a lighting factory or 57,000 customers to use this thinking. You need the discipline underneath it.

1. Pick a niche and own it. Stop selling everything. Be the best at one thing.
2. Fix the product first. Quality earns free five-star reviews, and reviews are marketing.
3. Own the customer. Build your own store so you can ask questions and get answers.
4. Survey and actually listen. Offer store credit, tag the themes, build the next improvement from real feedback.
5. Scale ads with numbers. Know your CPA and LTV, then scaling is logic, not a gamble.
6. Go broad, fix creative. Let the algorithm find buyers while you fix the real problem.
7. Protect your pricing. Use bundles to lift AOV instead of training people to wait for discounts.
8. Treat checkout like a product. Familiar payment options and fewer fields turn paid traffic into paid orders.

That is the whole game. No luck. No guru course with a Lamborghini on the thumbnail. Just systems that compound.

How V8 Media builds ecommerce brands like this

Sending more traffic to a leaky store is just paying more to lose. We fix the leak first. Then we pour fuel on it.

We run both sides. We drive the right buyers with Meta Ads and Google Ads. Then we fix the offer, the landing page, and the checkout so the sale actually happens.

It is the same playbook Litehouse ran. Niche, product, customer, numbers. We just do it for you.

We have done this since 2018. R2+ billion in client sales. Win the click, then win the sale.